


Smoke and Mirrors

by Edhla



Series: After the Fall [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Sherlock Whump, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-18 18:44:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 46,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4716593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edhla/pseuds/Edhla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Physically and emotionally shattered after a case goes wrong, Sherlock agrees to take John and Lestrade to investigate a "haunted house" on the Essex border. Meanwhile, Molly uncovers a shocking scandal at Barts. *Season 3 AU*</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Accused

**Author's Note:**

> This is a season 3 AU, the seventh in a series that begins with After the Fall. As such, it does not take into account any events in season 3 or any characters unique to that series. Any resemblance to those plots is entirely unintentional, and my characterisations are internally sound but may not always square with official canon.
> 
> The events dealt with in the first chapter of this story are contained in the one before it, On the Sixth Day.
> 
> Once again, this is based on a real-life case. Borley Rectory was the subject of many paranormal investigations during the 1920s and 1930s. These were mainly conducted by then-famous paranormal researcher Harry Price. Many of the characters, legends, events and locations mentioned in the following story are also based on real events and people.

Sherlock Holmes cleared his throat and looked across the crowded courtroom at Paul Doherty. Doherty did not return his gaze; he had kept his head down ever since he'd been placed in the dock, still as the statue of blind Justice. The high windows of the courtroom revealed a fine shower of dust, perhaps centuries old, floating down on his stubbled head. But beside him, the bull-necked Brian Merchant was as skittish as a calf. The judge, the estimable Justice Pinkerton, had more than once told the more dim-witted of the accused to pay attention and take the proceedings against him more seriously.

"Mr. Holmes," Miranda Davis, defence barrister representing Messrs Doherty and Merchant, urged Sherlock without force. She was a solemn, fortyish woman whose skill and no-nonsense attitude were belied by a snub nose smattered with freckles and unruly, greying red hair. By way of calming his nerves, Sherlock had already deduced that she lied about her age, that she had two children with a Turkish man she wasn't married to and who was five years her junior, that she had a secret love for EastEnders and her favourite tipple of choice was Sambuca. "You told my learned friend that at the time you were dragged out of the car by your feet, you heard a screech of car tyres on the road, and then a car door slam."

"Yes." Sherlock heard his voice hit the courthouse walls and ricochet like a bullet. His eyes met Doherty's.

_Wake up, sunshine._

He blinked and brought them back to Davis.

"Did you hear nothing else, Mr. Holmes?" she continued. "No voices?"

"Objection, your honour," Keith Allen, barrister for the Crown, interjected. "Leading the witness."

"Upheld." Justice Pinkerton's gnarled hands curled over the lectern before him like a gargoyle's. "Mr. Holmes, you are not required to answer that question."

Sherlock took a breath, grateful that he was not being asked to recount that he _had_ heard a voice: his own, making a distinctly unmasculine squeal of pain. He glanced up into the gallery where John sat, and then down toward the back of the courtroom to Greg Lestrade. It would be Lestrade's turn to give evidence after the midday recess, and John the following morning. It even looked likely that the Crown was going to call upon Molly to give evidence about the condition of Stephen's severed ears when she'd examined them. And then, of course, Mycroft...

Well, there was clearly nothing better for keeping old friends together than a nice old case of kidnapping, torture and murder, he reflected. After this, they should all go out for teppanyaki and chat it up about what fun it had been.

Lestrade frowned, then nodded. Sherlock turned back to Davis, flinching as his spine gave a vicious spasm of protest at being moved too abruptly.

"Mr. Holmes?"

"Yes," he said through gritted teeth, focusing on her. "Continue."

"Are you certain?"

_"Continue."_

In the silence that followed, Sherlock closed his eyes and awaited Davis's next question.

"How many times did you hear the car door, Mr. Holmes?" she asked, unperturbed by Pinkerton's earlier reprimand. Sherlock knew why: _you can't unask a question._ The jury would be sure to note that if Sherlock admitted he did not clearly see or hear Paul Doherty during the first few minutes after being kidnapped, he couldn't prove it was he who did the kidnapping.

"I'm afraid I wasn't counting," he said. "My priorities were elsewhere: in not dying, in escaping, and in avoiding pain wherever possible, in that order."

"So you cannot confirm for a fact that there was only one other person with you at that time?"

Sherlock's eyes narrowed. "No."

"What happened after you were dragged out of the car?"

For the first time in his cross-examination, Sherlock hesitated for a reason unrelated to the odd twinge in his back or arm. He glanced back at Lestrade, who gave him another encouraging nod.

"My next memory is of being thrown onto the floor of what I later learned was the Eccles Rowing Club headquarters," he finally said.

"And our map references indicate that this is a mile from the spot you were dragged out of the car, indicating that there is quite a gap in your memory. Mr. Holmes, why do you suppose this gap exists?"

Sherlock shut his eyes and drew a slow breath. "If you'd been paying attention to my initial evidence, you would know that the hospital later confirmed that I had a serious _concussion_ ," he told her. "I don't remember any further because Paul Doherty beat me unconscious with a tire-iron there beside the road. Then he transported me to the clubhouse while I was unconscious, or very close to it."

"But you cannot confirm that this sequence of events happened?"

"Oh, for God's _sake_. I just told you I was _unconscious_ and there is a gap in my memory; to be able to confirm I was knocked unconscious would be to confirm that I was not knocked unconscious, do you see how that works? Now you're just wasting my time, and the time of everyone in this courtroom."

"Nonetheless, Mr. Holmes, it's my job to – "

"Your job _should_ be to explain why Forensics found my DNA all over the tire-iron in the back of the car."

"Mr. Holmes -"

"Why don't you ask Paul Doherty to confirm it for you?" he snarled at her, resting both palms against the smooth wood of the lectern.

He glanced up at John again, but John's face was set and his arms folded. A sudden movement in Sherlock's peripheral vision caught his attention. Turning his head he could see Julian Hubert, his psychologist, leaning over Keith Allen's desk and muttering something to him. Miranda Davis, however, ignored the minor ripple in the courtroom behind her.

"Could you please identify, if possible, the person who did this to you, Mr. Holmes?"

"Already done it." Sherlock sighed and pointed. "There," he said. "Paul Doherty."

Davis pursed her lips. "Yet you say you were knocked unconscious, Mr. Holmes, and that your memories surrounding that incident are confused – "

"Your honour," Allen objected again, "Mr. Holmes _never_ said that he was confused in any way as to what happened."

"Upheld," Pinkerton said grimly. "Miss Davis, kindly allow the witness to use his own words. And may I remind you that neither you nor Mr. Holmes are medical professionals, and you are not in a position to provide conjecture on his injuries at that time and what effect they may or may not have had on his ability to recall information correctly. We have a number of experts to give that evidence themselves."

"Oh, my God, just stop this," Sherlock growled through his hands, giving a petulant stamp of his heel. "I've been tolerating this for an hour. 'Oh, don't expect Mr. Holmes to correctly remember a sequence of events'. 'Oh, Mr. Holmes can't possibly recall what his injuries felt like.' 'Oh, a broken arm would surely prevent Mr. Holmes from being able to plainly identify someone by sight.' 'Oh, Mr. Holmes is a nervous wreck whose testimony is worthless.' Considering I was there, I think there's no better person to give a full account of my injuries – "

"Your honour." Intercepting a look from Julian Hubert, Keith Allen was on his feet again, cutting off both Sherlock's complaint and Pinkerton's less-than-impressed response at being snapped at in his own courtroom. "Your honour, Mr. Holmes's psychologist requests a fifteen-minute recess so that his client can settle his agitation and regroup."

Sherlock looked up at him. "What?" he blurted out, eyes darting back and forth in alarm. "No, I'm not agitated, and I certainly don't need to regroup."

"Nonetheless, I imagine there are some in the courtroom who would appreciate a short break in the proceedings," Justice Pinkerton said, glancing at Hubert. "In light of that, I'm granting a recess. We will recommence in a quarter of an hour."

 

* * *

 

John was on his feet almost as soon as Pinkerton had spoken, but Lestrade, who didn't have to negotiate the gallery stairs, reached Sherlock first. John joined them to one side of the courtroom door as everyone milled out for coffee or the toilets.

"Those better not have been your orders," Sherlock snapped at John by way of greeting as they made their way across the antechamber.

John glanced at Lestrade, who gave an almost imperceptible shrug. "Sherlock, you saw I was all the way up in the gallery," he protested. "I'm not mind-controlling your psychologist." He decided not to point out that even from the heights of the gallery, he'd seen Sherlock's gaze wander too easily and too often to the closed courtroom doors and occasionally up to the windows, as if he were seeking an escape route. "Look, do you want me to get you a cup of coffee? Or maybe - "

"No." Sherlock had brought out his phone. "I have to call Mycroft and let him know what the jury are like, and I'm dying for a cigarette."

"I could do with one myself," Lestrade remarked innocently. "I'll come out with you."

"If you must," Sherlock muttered. He'd already fished into his pockets for his cigarettes and had an unlit one clamped resolutely between his lips. He rarely got himself into a situation where he had to have a cigarette, and John knew he was already wearing no less than two patches.

"Take your patches off, both of you, before you collapse of nicotine poisoning," John called after them. But Sherlock was halfway to the front entrance by this time. Lestrade, trailing behind, glanced back at John over his shoulder for a moment.

Sighing, John wandered over to one of the stone benches in the antechamber and sat down, pulling out his own mobile and navigating to Molly's number. It was one of her days at work, and whether her phone had reception or not depended on whether she was in the lab, her workstation or the morgue.

Direct to voicemail. Morgue.

"Hi, it's me. No emergency, I'll call later or see you tonight." He hung up, and the bench he sat on shuddered as an older, heavier man sat down beside him at rather close proximity. John fiddled with his phone's address book, not bothering to look up until the stranger spoke.

"Dr. Watson?"

"Yep." John glanced up good-naturedly. The man beside him was middle-aged, balding and grandfatherly-looking. This last one was helped along by the fact that he smelled strongly of menthol, something John associated with his own grandfather, a chain-smoker who had died when he was seven. He looked keenly at John with what were rapidly becoming a very familiar pair of blue eyes.

_Where have I seen him before...?_

"Harry Price." The man put his hand out and John, still trying to place him, distractedly shook it. Very warm, very firm handshake; the handshake of a used car salesman, or maybe a televangelist...

"Oh," he finally said inelegantly as the penny dropped. "From the telly. Hi."

Harry Price, self-proclaimed parapsychologist and medium, did not look particularly thrilled at being identified as "from the telly." But then, John reflected, that was his own fault for having a show on BBC Two with such an unbelievably arrogant title as _The Amazing Harry Price._

"I understand you're Sherlock Holmes's personal assistant," Price said, neatly folding the lengths of his grey woollen coat over his bony knees.

"That is _not_ a euphemism. I can promise you that there's only so much that I personally assist him with." John curled his fingers around the phone in his lap and finally looked at the stranger properly. Definitely Harry Price. The man looked like a cadaver, if cadavers were capable of exuding almost nauseating levels of self-satisfaction. No doubt both of those things helped with the trade. "Can I help you?"

"Well, I hope so. I have a case Mr. Holmes may be able to assist with."

"No." The word came out like a gunshot. "In case you haven't noticed, Sherlock's in court today 'cause his last case got two men killed and nearly killed two more, including himself. He's not taking any further cases for the time being."

"I imagine you've seen my programme," Price continued, as if he hadn't heard John's refusal.

"Yes, I've seen it." This was true; John and Molly sometimes tuned in to The Amazing Harry Price to laugh at the antics of an obviously staged programme and an obviously fake medium. "What's that got to do with Sherlock?"

"He recently published a paper on the psychological and physiological causes for people to report psychic phenomena."

"Yes. But uh, I've not read it." Sherlock had written and published a great deal over the past couple of months, having little else to do as he recovered. Not all of his writing was academically motivated. John knew he'd also perfected the art of typing with his left hand, just as an experiment; and that after discovering the limitations of the voice recognition technology on his computer he'd been experimenting with ways to improve it. Of course, the fact that this would benefit any number of people also unable to type by hand never occurred to him until John had pointed it out, and then he'd shoved that consideration aside as relatively unimportant.

John had given Sherlock's article, On Infrasound and Other Scientific Causes of Paranormal Phenomena, a solid miss. The title alone was practically a sedative.

"Pity. It was a very interesting article," Price said. "Certainly your friend has a formidable intellect."

John hid a smirk behind his hand. Apparently, Price had never seen The Princess Bride; or if he had, he didn't realise he'd nearly quoted it. There was one line in particular that had become so much funnier since John Watson had met Sherlock Holmes: _Ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates...? Morons!_

"He's the most intelligent man I've ever met," John said. His phone suddenly buzzed in his hand; without apologies he checked the incoming text from Greg.

_Right hand._

_\- Today 10:47am_

He gave his attention to the response for a minute or two.

_Ignore it and the smoking. Talk about Matthew's novel._

_` - Today 10:48am_

Matthew Lestrade, still only sixteen, was about to be a published author. Strawberry Hill Publishing House had just accepted his first novel, Death Watch, which was due out in September.

"Yes, it's clear you think highly of him," Price said, bringing John reluctantly back to the conversation in front of him. "Anyhow, it seems that those in the upper echelons of the London Society for Psychical Research have also read Mr. Holmes's essay, and that's put me in an interesting professional position, shall we say. Now tell me, have you heard of a place called Borley Rectory?"

"Nope, can't tell you I have." John shifted, wishing he was outside with Sherlock and Greg, or at least that he was sitting on a chair with a solid back to lean against. "What, is it haunted?"

"Very. I might even say it's the most haunted house in England."

John snorted.

"Ah, see." Price pointed in vague accusation with one knobbly finger. "See, there. You know nothing about Borley Rectory, Dr. Watson. You've known about its existence for about ten seconds. And yet you insist it can't possibly be haunted. Rather too early to call that one, don't you think? And judging from his printed views, I imagine Mr. Holmes feels the same way."

"Holy God, you should have seen the way he carried on when I got my daughter baptised."

"I can imagine. So you're a man of faith, then?"

"No, not particularly." John folded his arms. "And I'm also under the impression that asking strangers about their religious beliefs is rude."

"My apologies. I was only trying to demonstrate that we all believe things that are a little irrational at times, whether that's ghosts or God."

 _God, he's as smooth as glass._ No fumble. No embarrassment... and no real regret, John realised, behind the man's apologies. "Not Sherlock," he said, wondering again how the conversation outside was transpiring. "He says if it's not scientifically quantifiable, it doesn't exist."

Price's face twitched. It seemed like amusement, but for a second, John wondered if it were closer to a sort of controlled... rage? That was odd. No need to get enraged over a difference of opinion.

"What about things like love?" Price asked.

"He gave my wife and me an essay called _The Neurochemistry of Love_ once." _For our first anniversary present. With "love" marked out in air quotes every time he used it._

"From the sounds of things, I'm looking very much forward to meeting him. I'm sure we could have a lot of conversations where we both learn something. Anyhow, so what I'm proposing, Dr. Watson, is for Sherlock Holmes to join me in a full investigation into the rectory. The great detective and the great parapsychologist, hunting down the truth."

Was this guy seriously putting himself on the same level as Sherlock Holmes? His show was full of cheap party tricks. Even the London branch of the SPR apparently didn't think much of him, and they actually _believed_ in that sort of ghosty stuff.

"And all this for your programme," John said warily. "You want to put Sherlock on TV?"

"No, not at all. This will be a strictly scientific and fully-documented investigation for the LSPR. They take themselves and their work seriously, Dr. Watson. No television cameras, no tricks, no gimmicks."

Well, that was one thing, John supposed. "Yeah, well, as interesting as all that sounds, like I said, Sherlock's not taking any cases; not right now," he repeated stubbornly.

"There are no properly documented cases of ghosts ever causing human harm, Dr. Watson."

"I'm not surprised, 'cause I don't think there are any properly documented cases of ghosts," John muttered into his chest, then looked back up at Price. At the last minute, he decided not to point out how he was fairly sure there were plenty of documented cases of dodgy fake mediums causing human harm. "The problem with all this is, one of you has to lose this one," he said instead. "And let me tell you, Mr. Price, the loser won't be Sherlock. He likes to win."

Price smiled. "So do I," he said, standing up stiffly. "Do ask Mr. Holmes to call me when he gets a chance, will you?"

"No."

"Thank you, Dr. Watson." Price slapped John's shoulder affably. "I'm much obliged."


	2. Ball and Chain

It was past eight in the evening, and a chill wind was shaking leaves from the overhanging plane trees onto the dark front step, before Greg Lestrade wearily let himself into his own house. Hayley was nowhere to be seen – probably at Jake's place - but he found Melissa and Matthew in the brightly-lit living room. It was one of Matthew's visitation weekends, though these were not such a novelty now he was sixteen and had the permission of both Julie and the Family Court to come over to the house whenever he pleased. He was slumped in one of the armchairs in a crumpled t-shirt, jeans and bare socks, staring at the television. Melissa was on the nearby sofa, feet up, her laptop on her knees. Glancing over at the screen, he saw that she was filling in a client review, not chatting away on Facebook.

"Behold my Monday night, Greg," she said tiredly, tilting her head up so that he could give her an upside-down kiss on the forehead. "Have you eaten?"

"Yeah, I, uh, ate at Sherlock's," he said, rubbing the back of his head.

She raised an eyebrow. "At the flat? Great, I await the spectacular bout of food poisoning that should kick in in a couple of hours. How is he, anyway?" There was no need to ask how the day's hearing had gone, since they'd already discussed it at length over the phone once the court had adjourned nearly three hours earlier. Although Brian Merchant had been found, the day after Sherlock and Stephen's rescue, to be covered from clavicle to pelvis in suspiciously boot-shaped bruises, Miranda Davis had never asked Lestrade to account for them when he'd taken the witness box that afternoon.

"Oh, you know, he's okay... just the usual." Lestrade's glance to her, and then to his son, told her that discussing Sherlock would have to wait until they were alone in their bedroom. He threw himself down in the armchair next to Matthew, not realising that he'd done so in a complete mirror of Matthew's body language, and therefore not understanding why Melissa smiled for a second. Leaning over, he poked Matthew's arm.

"Hey," he said. "I'm actually home now, if you didn't notice. Anything interesting on?"

"Top Gear," Matthew said. "Does that count?"

Not for the first time, Lestrade was amazed at how much Matthew now sounded like Julie's brother, Alan. _Though he's losing the Bristol accent,_ Lestrade reflected, not realising that he had himself for several years sounded like the world's only Bristolian Cockney. _Fair cop. We've been in London since he was six._

"Depends. Has that idiot Clarkson died in a fiery onscreen wreck yet?" he wanted to know.

Matthew shrugged without taking his eyes off the screen. "Maybe, but this is a rerun."

"I'll give it half points, then." Lestrade poked him again. Sometimes Matthew needed to be physically jogged a few times before he switched his attention from one thing to the other, and sixteen years had told his father that he wasn't doing it to be annoying. "So what else has been happening?" he asked him.

"Quite a lot over at Julie's place, it seems," Melissa remarked, not bothering to look up from where she was still typing away at her laptop. "So when were you going to tell me?"

He looked at her for a few seconds, trying to work out how much she knew - _shit._ "Tell you...?"

She looked up at him for the first time, her heavy-lashed brown eyes calm and unaccusing. "Well, it's just that Spawn tells me Julie's getting remarried," she said.

"Oh, _nice one_ , mate," Lestrade hissed at Matthew, rolling his eyes.

"Seriously? For God's sake, Greg, it's not _his_ fault you didn't tell me!" Melissa snapped the laptop shut and thunked it down on the sofa cushion next to her. Smoky, who had been dozing on the arm of the sofa, startled and ran for cover. "God knows when _you_ would have. Is that the sort of thing we're doing in this relationship now? What, were you just not going to mention it for six months and then say, 'Oh, by the way, Mel, not that it's any of your business or anything, but I'm going to my ex wife's wedding next Saturday'?"

"I'm _not_ going to it," Lestrade protested. "I know you have some strange idea that I piss in Julie's pockets, but – "

"Lovely."

"Maybe I haven't told you about it yet because I was trying to think of a way of doing it without _this_ happening - "

"So because you knew I'd be angry that you didn't tell me promptly... you didn't tell me promptly? Logic is not your strong point, is it?" Melissa glanced over at Matthew. He was totally ignoring the television now and looking like he was trying to decide if it would be worse for him if he pretended he wasn't there or got up to leave. "Matthew," she said calmly. "Your father and I are about to have a completely normal, natural and non-catastrophic row, so could you please head on upstairs for a bit while we have it?"

Matthew was already on his feet by this time. He gave his father a worried glance over his shoulder as he left, and it was only when both of them heard his heavy tread on the ceiling above them that Melissa spoke again.

"Once we're done," she said, "go upstairs and you will tell him this wasn't his fault. You know what he's like. I'm surprised he doesn't consider himself responsible for the Kennedy assassination."

"Okay, that really _is_ something for me and Julie to work through without your help," he said. "When I want your professional opinion of my son, I'll ask you for it. Anyway, I think we both know you couldn't really care less who Julie marries; that's not what you're pissed off about. Let's have it out. This is _jealousy_ , that's all it is. Julie and Mark are getting married and we're not."

"I'm certainly not jealous that she's about to have the dullest man in Britain for a life partner," Melissa said. "Greg, listen, we've been together for two and a half years, and – "

He rolled his eyes.

"And you don't _tell me things_ ," she finished. "You don't tell me things, and I'm not allowed to even have an opinion on how to raise the kids that I live with most of the time, and Julie is a sacred cow, insult intended, and now look, am I part of your family or _not?_ Because if I am, you need to tell me when your ex-wife decides to get remarried, and you need to tell me properly."

He put his face in his hands. "Mel," he said. "It's really not a big deal, you know. Julie's getting remarried in September. Hayley and Matty are going. I'm not. It'll just be an ordinary Saturday for you and me."

"An ordinary Saturday. My life is filled with ordinary Saturdays. Don't you want to have a non-ordinary Saturday one of these days?"

"Wait... give me a second to think about what I want to say to that." He ran his fingers over his hair thoughtfully, taking a couple of breaths. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. This wasn't completely Mel's fault either, he reflected to himself _._ For the entire twenty-six years of their marriage, Julie had thrown it at him often – getting on his case like a harpy was the only way she knew how to counteract his selective deafness.

"Mel," he finally said. "I'm fifty-one years old."

"I know. I threw you a fantastic fiftieth birthday party, remember?"

"And you're twenty-nine."

"Noted. You can throw me a thirtieth birthday party."

He grimaced in frustration for a few seconds, but stopped just short of demanding she be serious for ten minutes. "Yeah, I don't think you're getting this. If I..." He paused again. "If we, you know, got married, there's a whole lot of things you wouldn't get to do that you might if you married someone else."

"Someone younger, you mean," she said. "You think I wouldn't want to nurse you in your old age?"

"No," he said uncomfortably. "It's not that. You're... in a different life stage..."

She sighed heavily. "Oh, that," she said. "I don't _want_ to have children. I've _never_ wanted to have them and I'm never going to change my mind on that one. Yours are great, because they weren't kids anymore by the time I got here. Charlie Watson may be as cute as a button, but I've never wanted to hold _any_ baby for longer than about ten minutes, let alone give myself a weak pelvic floor and a load of stretch marks by having one of my own. I don't know why you don't get that, Greg."

"Well, 'cause you might change your mind."

Melissa scoffed.

"No, but you _might,_ Mel. Julie didn't want any kids either; not until she was thirty. Literally woke up one day, and it was like a switch got turned on. Took us two years to have Hayley – "

"Well, what happens if the apocalypse arrives and I wake up tomorrow wanting a kid when we're _not_ married?"

He looked at her in silence for a few seconds. "Then it's easier for you to move on to someone else who can give you one, without us having to go to war in the Family Law Court," he said.

"Greg, you're not even listening," she said, taking his wrist for a couple of seconds to get his attention. "You've been dragging your feet for ages on this one, all because you think I want a baby and think I don't really want to get married. And you've based that one on absolutely nothing except that _Julie_ wanted kids, and didn't want to stay married to you."

He winced, wondering if Mel, for all her past boyfriends, really understood how much it had hurt, and still hurt: _I choose to reject you._ "Mel," he tried again. "Listen, I know. But it's not like there's any chance to change your mind after. You know I - "

"Yep, I know how vasectomies work, Greg." She folded her arms, then, apparently realising she looked defensive doing so, unfolded them again. "Still not bothered by it. Marry me."

He looked up at her, as alarmed as if she'd slapped him. "Was that a _proposal?"_

She paused, touching her lips with her fingertips for a second. "I didn't mean it as one in my head," she admitted slowly, "but sure, okay. It's a proposal. Gregory Peter Lestrade, aged fifty-one and now shooting blanks because of a vasectomy he had fifteen years ago, will you marry me?"

* * *

"You did well today, Sherlock," John remarked over his shoulder as he ran the kitchen tap and clunked some dirty dishes into the sink. What Greg had neglected to tell Melissa was that Mrs. Hudson had prepared their evening meal, so the food poisoning she was worried about was probably never going to eventuate. But Mrs. Hudson's first comment as they'd trailed in the door at half-past five was that she was _not_ going to wash up for them. She'd signed out for the day, as it were, and now the faint strains of the theme from Coronation Street floating up the flat stairs were proof of it.

In the cluttered living room, Sherlock was lying stiffly on the sofa, his bare feet hanging off the end and his undamaged forearm flung over his forehead. The other arm was now out of its cast and well on the mend, but he had laid it carefully over his chest.

"Stop patronising me," he muttered darkly. "I testified. I've testified before."

"Fine." The dishes clinked together as John put a clean plate on the drying rack. "You did a terrible job today, Sherlock."

"The defence are having a field day with me."

"No, they're not." John rubbed his nose briefly with the back of his wrist. "They're _pretending_ to be having a field day, 'cause that's what they're supposed to do. They're not going to act like they're losing. Anyway, you answered all the questions you could."

"Therein lies the problem."

"Hmm?"

Sherlock gave a brief, breathless little grunt of pain. Hands still dripping soapy water all over the floor, John reached the doorway to the living room in time to see him sit up with difficulty. "For God's sake," he hissed to himself.

John waited, but Sherlock never unravelled it: _for God's sake. My back is supposed to be fully healed and it still hurts._

"I'm not entirely certain I was unconscious for as long as I said I was," he continued, scruffing his hair up. "It's a medical fact that if I was out for any longer than about thirty seconds, I would almost definitely have permanent brain damage. I don't. The defence will be sure to point that out, which will bring both my testimony and my motivations into sharp question."

"Yeah, well, you still did have a blackout, Sherlock." John dried his hands on a nearby dish towel and then went to the medicine cabinet. "Whether you were neurologically unconscious at the time or not is totally beside the point. You can be wide awake and not remember anything, or not remember much. And Mycroft is going to have to take the stand tomorrow and say the exact same thing you did."

"Mycroft's starting to remember."

"Mycroft's started to _think_ he's remembering," John corrected him, still shuffling through packets of paracetamol and sticking plasters. "For all we know, he's having invented memories, and - _Sherlock Holmes_."

Sherlock raised his eyebrows innocently. "What?"

John came back into the room, a small white box in his hand. A foil bubble pack poked out of it like a shiny tongue. "Sherlock, by my count, you're meant to have twelve of these left."

"Yes."

"And I'm counting sixteen. Did you skip two full doses today?"

"They're not good for working," Sherlock said. Then, before John could make too many enquiries as to possible late-night experiments going on at his kitchen table, he followed up with, "or for being cross-examined on something that happened months ago."

John sighed heavily and went to fetch a glass of water. "They do a marvellous job on pain, though," he said, putting two pills in Sherlock's hand and watching him while he took them. "These aren't like paracetamol, that you take when it hurts and stop when it doesn't. You're supposed to have a steady supply in your bloodstream, which will stop you feeling so out of it when you _do_ take them. Anyway, I'm afraid you won't be working for a while, unless you want to go on a ghost hunt in Suffolk, or some place."

"... I'm sorry, _what_ did you say?" Sherlock glanced across at the packet John was holding in his hand. "Hmm. I wasn't expecting to be high _that_ quickly."

John explained about his meeting with Price earlier that day, taking great pains to comment on how Price wasn't making friends or influencing people in _his_ corner and that the whole thing was probably going to end up a media circus.

"But Google it, if you're interested," he suggested. "I mean, of all the cases we could be taking on, it can't hurt, can it?"

He did not notice Sherlock's brief smirk. _We._

Sherlock was quickly on his phone. By the time John came back to his armchair, he had his eyes shut and both hands lying on his breast, like a vampire, his phone tucked protectively under them. Glancing across, John saw that his face looked pinched in the light of the nearby lamp.

"I'm not strung out," he said abruptly. "I'm thinking."

"Listen, Sherlock..." John said, fumbling a little. "Just, if you do start remembering stuff, you know you can tell me about it, right?"

"Just what is that meant to imply?" Sherlock opened one eye and looked impassively at him across the shadowy room.

John hedged. "If something happened to you, something you don't want to talk about... I mean, when Moriarty –"

"Stop talking." Sherlock shut his eyes again. "Doherty's criminal profile suggests his MO is not sexual assault, and neither Stephen nor I have shown any physical evidence or latent memories of any such thing ever happening. Next topic."

He held out his phone to John, who cleared his throat and stood up to reach over for it. "Okay," he muttered, sinking back down into his armchair. "Well, just so you know. So what am I looking at?"

"Borley Rectory. Essex, not Suffolk, though you were very close."

"Ugly place," John commented, peering at a high-definition shot of the stark red-brick mansion and then glancing across to see if Sherlock was laughing his head off at the entire premise of this new case. He wasn't. "You're seriously thinking about this?"

Sherlock seemed about to reply, but before he could do so they both heard the front door downstairs open. Puzzled, Sherlock got to his feet, just as John leapt up and went out through the kitchen door and down the stairs to the first landing.

"Greg," he said. "You're back. Did you... oh." His tone changed abruptly, and Sherlock saw him beckon. "Right, come up."

Sherlock waited while John returned, trailing a much wearier and sombre Greg Lestrade behind him. Lestrade stopped in the living room door, his hands shoved into his pockets.

"Oh, go ahead, Sherlock," he muttered to him. "Deduce away."

Not realising that this was the last thing Lestrade actually wanted him to do, Sherlock let his gaze bounce over him from head to toe. "You just rejected a marriage proposal from Melissa," he said. "Your right wrist clearly shows -"

"You _what?_ " John blinked stupidly. "Seriously, Greg...?"

* * *

For her entire career Molly Watson, _nee_ Hooper, had been holding onto a rather big secret, known only to her husband and a handful of colleagues: ninety percent of her day-to-day work was paperwork. Very, very _boring_ paperwork.

Being a pathologist was both a lot harder and a lot less fun than was depicted on television. For every five minutes elbow-deep in guts in an autopsy, there were about a hundred minutes you had to spend writing out a report on that autopsy. And for every autopsy report you wrote, there were about five you had to peer review.

The one she had been quietly working on at the dining room table since coming home was... horrible. Well, frankly, the whole Fetal and Infant department was rather horrible, since pathology didn't often deal with the success cases. Ten-month-old Evie Sadler had died during open heart surgery at St James' Paediatric Hospital earlier that week. Her autopsy had been carried out at Barts, as per the wishes of her parents, for the purposes of researching the causes and finding a cure for Atrial-Septic defects. The autopsy had been carried out by Professor Ross Harding, Lab Director, in the presence of four medical students; and it was Molly's job to review his findings and sign off on the procedurals so that the baby could be given back to her parents and buried.

Nine minutes into her review, Molly had started to swallow heavily.

Twelve minutes in, she got up to turn the light on and take a few deep breaths.

Twenty minutes in, she went to the nursery and fetched Charlie, who had been sitting up in her cot babbling away to herself and gumming the corner of a Rubik's Cube that Sherlock had, in his infinite wisdom, felt was an appropriate gift for an eight-month-old child. Molly confiscated it to change Charlie's nappy and comforted her daughter's resulting heartbreak a little absently, taking her downstairs once she'd calmed down and feeding her as she continued looking over the case in front of her.

All in order, so far as she could see. No suggestion that Evie's condition was anything other than horrible misfortune. Nobody's fault. Evie had died while she was still under, and hadn't suffered. The autopsy had been standard procedure with no nasty surprises, and the paperwork seemed to be in order. Molly was about to sign off on the whole horrid thing and hopefully forget about it forever when she saw it.

Or rather, she didn't see it.

The thoracic organs, including the heart, had been removed from Evie's body for embalming prior to being thoroughly examined at a later date.

_But where are the permission papers from the parents?_

Professor Ross Harding didn't know it yet, but he was due to be read a Molly Watson rendition of the Riot Act the next morning at work. These things were hard enough to get through without people losing and misplacing important paperwork like that all over the place, and delaying the return of a baby's body to her parents was not something Molly wanted to be responsible for. She was just wondering if she should pick up the phone then and there, though it was now nearly half-past nine, when the front door clinked and she heard John's tread in the hall. A few seconds later, he came through into the kitchen.

"Hey."

Molly had by now more-or-less accepted the fact that she couldn't compete with her daughter for John's attention, and handed Charlie over. The little girl snuggled into his neck as he leaned over to kiss his wife.

"What's that?" he asked, gesturing to the work in front of her.

"Oh, my God, don't ask. Once I'm finished, I never, ever want to look at it again." She snapped her laptop shut and got up, going over to the kettle. "How was it today?"

"Um." He scratched the back of his head awkwardly with one hand, leaving a cowlick that she decided not to point out, since it made him seem like an overgrown schoolboy. "The trial? There's no way in hell that they'll get off on those charges, Molly. They're as guilty as sin. The whole court knows it."

"And Sherlock?"

"Would you believe I had to make him _take_ drugs today?" John shook his head. "And I'm the last person who'd be telling him to pop pills if he didn't need them. I dunno what's got into him, but I don't like it." He sat down, flinching a little as Charlie's grubby fist smacked him lightly in the chin.

"I know that he was nervous about giving evidence," Molly said. "Especially because he can't really remember some of what happened. He probably wanted a clear head for it."

"Which didn't work," John said gloomily. "I mean, no witness-stand meltdowns or anything horrible, but he wasn't able to bring his best game. I didn't think it was pain that was throwing him off, though." His face twitched in guilt for a moment. "Anyway," he said in different tones, "it's done now. Oh, and he got offered a case – nothing dangerous. Just a publicity stunt. Ghost hunting."

Molly paused, tea bag suspended halfway over John's cup, and raised one eyebrow. "Ghost hunting? You mean, as in, grown-ups actually hunting for actual ghosts?"

"Harry Price asked Sherlock to join him on an investigation into some supposedly-haunted mansion – er, rectory." John was idly trying to remember what the difference was between a rector, a vicar and a parson. Caroline Edalji had explained it during her son's case a year before, but he hadn't really been paying attention...

"Harry Price?" Molly had always had a sort of childlike adoration of anyone she considered a "celebrity", and although she knew as well as John did that Price was a fraud, her eyes had just lit up like a birthday cake. "Like on that show?" she clarified. " _That_ Harry Price?"

John nodded. "Had the nerve to come up to me at the trial today."

"Maybe it'll do Sherlock good to be on a case again, even if it isn't a very important one." Molly, bringing John's tea over to him and twisting the cup handle away from Charlie's grasping fingers, gave him a significant glance, so much as if to say that it wasn't just _Sherlock_ who could do with it. "It's been months since... all that happened. He must be bored."

"He is. But I didn't think he'd be up for it right now – not great timing, not with the trial and everything. Now that we have Greg -" He stopped himself just in time, but Molly had heard too much. She frowned.

"You have Greg _what?"_

Molly was later to find out that the full disclosure would have been: _a temporary resident of my old bedroom at 221b, as it happens._ "Have you heard from Melissa today, by any chance?" he asked her instead.

She shook her head. "What? Is it something bad?"

He made a face. "Maybe you should give her a call, let her tell you herself. I won't lie... I sort of want to hear the other side of the story now."


	3. Chapter 3

"He better not have told Sherlock and John that I kicked him out of his own house," Melissa said loudly down the line. "I can promise you, once he basically told me that proposals are for boys, he flounced off of his own accord."

Molly, standing in the third-floor south tea room juggling hot tea in one hand and her phone in the other, frowned and clucked her tongue sympathetically. It had been first too late the night before to call up Melissa and ask what was going on between her and Greg, and then too early in the morning. It was nearly eight now and she was about to sign on for the day, but had snuck in a quick call first. It was proving difficult to navigate a conversation with Melissa about her relationship woes when she was, all said and done, at least partially sympathetic to Greg as well. She also knew she was not the most tactful person on earth, and had spent the last three minutes and counting trying to find a good excuse to get off the line.

Fortunately, just then she had glanced out of the open door to see Ross Harding slip through the foyer on the way to his office, briefcase in one hand, coffee in the other. She put down her tea, reaching over and picked up the heavy paper file on Evie Sadler, along with the jump-drive containing all of the electronic data of the case.

"Oh, I don't think he would have said something like that," she consoled, a little automatically. "John didn't say he was cross or anything when he got to Sherlock's. Um, Mel, I really do have to go."

"So do I. So many psychopaths to assess today, so little time." Melissa sighed heavily.

"I'll call you tonight, okay?"

Molly took a breath as she hung up the line and looked reluctantly at Evie's file. Girding all of her bravery, she picked up her tea and went over to Harding's office, knocking on the door awkwardly with the back of her hand. Harding looked up, taking a sip of coffee with one hand and going through a pile of papers on his desk with the other.

"Molly," he said after a hasty swallow that had clearly scalded his throat a little. "How can I help?"

"I've got your autopsy report from peer review, Professor." Molly put it on the desk in front of him. "Evie Sadler."

The staff of Barts were generally on a first name basis with one another; Molly, Mike, Sharon, Trevor, Sherlock. Ross Harding was never _Ross_ , or even _Dr_. _Harding_. He was _Professor_ , almost as if he were a Hogwarts teacher who'd somehow been stranded in Central London without his wand.

"Oh," he said pleasantly, reaching across the desk for it. "Thanks - "

"I didn't sign off on it."

Harding stopped short, his fingertips resting on the file, and looked up at her. Molly saw for a second that he wasn't just surprised... he was angry.

"Why not?" he asked briskly.

"Because there's no signed slip from her parents giving permission for harvesting her organs." Molly planted her heels into the floor. It was something John had suggested to her for when she felt intimidated; afterwards, she had noticed just how often John did it, too.

Harding sighed heavily, then opened the file and idly flicked through it. Molly felt a hot flash of her own anger – this was a _baby's autopsy file,_ not a copy of _Hello_ magazine from the break room!

"Professor...?" she prompted.

Harding smiled wryly. "Damn," he said as if he'd left his car headlights on, not discovered a serious breach of conduct that affected the entire department. "Well, it probably got lost somewhere; that does happen. I'm confident that we wouldn't have harvested those organs and conducted research on them without permission – "

"Wait, you've already _used_ those samples?" Molly's mouth dropped open. "You used them? When you didn't have any permission?"

"I'm afraid so." Harding leaned back in his leather desk chair and looked quite unrepentant. "Even if we didn't, putting them back if the parents say no is a little absurd, isn't it? They aren't going to check they've been returned, and it's all for the good of kids like Evie who could be cured in the future."

"But you didn't have permission!"

"Well, we'll get it in retrospect. Do me a favour and contact the Sadlers today, Molly, and have a new form sent out. They need to hear this from us, not from the admin staff."

Molly was silent for a few seconds. She was twisting her wedding ring; most of her friends and family knew this as a sign she was truly angry. Was Professor Harding _serious?_ He had conducted that bloody autopsy. _He_ had taken the organs from a dead baby without permission, allowed them to be dissected and injected and sliced and diced and pickled, and now he was cross at _her_ for not signing off on it anyway? And he was making _her_ call the bereaved parents to cover his arse?

Professor Harding was, among other things, her direct professional superior.

"Yes, Professor." She stood up. "I'll do that as soon as possible."

* * *

"Absolutely no doubt about it." John took off his jacket and threw it over the back of his armchair, then loosened his tie. "They'll be out for a verdict tomorrow. And it'll be 'guilty as sin', and I hope the judge decides to throw away the key."

It was evening, and John and Lestrade had come back to 221B with Sherlock after a second day at the Old Bailey. Mycroft had bore witness that morning. Not for the first time, he had reminded Lestrade of some dauntless military hero of old, letting cannon balls and musketfire whistle past his very ears as if they were nothing more alarming than mayflies buzzing on a calm spring evening. Nelson at Trafalgar. Wellington at Waterloo. Totally unperturbed by Miranda Davis's attempts to bully him into a state of blithering nerves:

_Did you ever speak to Paul Doherty himself on the phone, Mr. Holmes?_

_– No._

_Did you ever speak to Brian Merchant himself on the phone, Mr. Holmes?_

_– No._

_Mr. Holmes, did Doherty or Merchant ever explicitly identify themselves as the ones behind the kidnapping of Stephen Hassell and Sherlock Holmes? Did they ever identify themselves to you physically, or by name?_

_– No._

Davis had looked pleased when her cross-examination was over but Lestrade, sitting beside a twitchy Sherlock in the gallery and keeping an eye both on him and on the proceedings, knew this for the bluff it was. Mycroft, with his calm matter-of-factness, his obvious intelligence and class, was an extremely credible witness. His admissions of not remembering or having proof of the kidnapping weren't harming the case for the prosecution much. There were his fingers, for a start. Four months on, they still bore faint white lines that read: _When We Want You We Will Take You._

Dr. John Watson was also a credible witness that afternoon, due in part to the inherent middle-class respectibility of his profession and partly because he came across as such a harmless, truthful, good-natured bloke. He backed up Sherlock's account of the night Stephen had been kidnapped in almost every detail, except that he was asked, as an M.D, to give his opinion on Mycroft's mental state that night.

"He remembered who'd won the last World Cup," John had said. "His birthday, his brother's, mine. Could spell his name backwards. He was lucid when I got there, but he was also pre-hypothermic and had concussion."

Davis had followed a line of enquiry from Mycroft's alcohol intake that evening, to enquiring if John was aware of either Holmes brother having a substance abuse problem. Fortunately, Keith Allan had practically leapt over his desk to sputter his objection, and Justice Pinkerton had roared at Davis to desist in her enquiries in that line before the painfully-honest doctor had been able to open his mouth.

The "drugs stash" at 221B just then would have disappointed Miranda Davis. No sooner had John put down his jacket on the chair and his wallet and keys on the table, he went straight for the medicine cupboard again, opening the white packet of pills and very obviously counting them.

"He took his dose this morning," Lestrade said quietly, coming into the kitchen under the pretense of making coffee. "Watched him do it."

"Don't start that, now, or he'll enjoy having you around and never let you leave. Speaking of which, have you talked to Mel...?"

"Texted – she was at work. Oh, look, it was fine, honestly. Nobody texted any threats or four-letter words. Said she was taking Matty to the British Museum."

"You're not actually going to break up with her after all this, are you?"

Lestrade shrugged, as if to say, _well, we're not getting married._

John frowned briefly and took the medicine out to where Sherlock had sank down into the sofa again, looking rather sulkily at the ceiling. He turned his head slightly, then sat up – without, John noted, the pronounced wince of yesterday. "No, not yet," he said. "I'll take those later."

John dropped his shoulders in exasperation."Why not now?" he demanded.

"Because Harry Price is due to arrive in an hour, and I think it's only good manners to not be high when he arrives."

"You're seriously thinking of taking this case?" John asked for the sixth time in two days, sitting down. Sherlock shrugged.

"I don't play games I can't win. I don't enjoy games I can't lose," he said. "Price can't possibly win by science, so to "prove" a haunting, he needs to be a talented conjurer and he needs to be clever. I want Price to show me what he can do before I put his name next to mine professionally." He rubbed his palms together, then clapped them. "So," he said, almost chipper at the prospect of some mental exercise. "You two fancy a cold-reading from a famous fraud?"

* * *

The curtains to the kitchen and living room of 221B were drawn close, and the only light came from the standing lamp in the corner near the sofa. Harry Price was sitting in a chair at the table opposite Sherlock Holmes, his withered hands laid over the younger man's smoother, whiter ones. Both John, sitting in his armchair, and Lestrade, on the sofa, could see that while Sherlock's eyes may have been shut, he was clearly mentally very busy. Once or twice, John almost expected him to start giggling.

"Oh, dear," Price mumbled. His face was contorted into numerous deep trenches and hills, like an old battlefield, and his eyelids flickered in rather theatrical distress.

John glanced at Lestrade across the dim room, but had been instructed to shut up and sit still while Price was "reading."

"Oh dear, yes, she's telling me now," Price bleated. "Something to do with her abdomen... cancer, she tells me. She suffered terribly, oh _dear,_ the poor woman!"

"Fraud." Sherlock suddenly lifted his head and withdrew his hands from Price's.

The older man opened his eyes too, blinking in astonishment. "Hey?" he asked, his accent suddenly plummeting from the heightened RP tones he used on his programme and had been using since John had met him the day before.

"I said _fraud."_ Sherlock stood up swiftly, buttoning his jacket. "Mr. Price, you're to be commended for your hubris, if nothing else. You took a great risk trying to present blatant cold-reading as a legitimate paranormal phenomenon to someone who employs _the same methods_ more honestly. It's not a gift. It's a _science_. I'll even accept that it's a magic trick, but there is nothing remotely supernatural about it."

"I-"

"Oh, come on. I was watching carefully the conclusions you made when you supposedly contacted the dear-departed maternal units of John and Greg."

Sherlock didn't see Lestrade blink in surprise and would not have understood why he'd done so – he'd never before heard Sherlock refer to him by his first name. Price, meanwhile, looked distinctly like a man who'd just been caught with his trousers down. "I'm sorry?" he garbled.

"Oh, would you like me to spell out how you actually came to your conclusions? I'm sure these two would appreciate it. Firstly, your so-called contact of John's mother. John's mother was an intensely Catholic woman who regarded newspaper horoscopes as the work of Satan. Let's assume for argument's sake that she's wandering around on the spiritual plane between heaven and earth, as opposed to being mentally nowhere and physically in the ground somewhere out at Witham."

John's mother had been dead for twenty-five years, so it was a wound that had largely healed. Still, he sighed and made a mental note to strongly remind Sherlock about sensitivity once he was finished reaming Harry Price.

"Why would someone who was repulsed by Spiritualism in life have an afterlife chat with a medium? Unless she was trying to discredit you." Sherlock deigned to look both thoughtful and sarcastic at the same time. "After all, she told you a large amount of wrong information, such as how many children she gave birth to. Odd thing to get wrong, don't you think? John is one of two, not three, though it was a nice guess at the national average for his generation. He's been married for less than two years, not upwards of ten, as you confidently called it. He has one child, not two."

John frowned. He'd already realised that his comment about Charlie's recent baptism had given away that he was a parent, but didn't recall Price even mentioning _two_ children.

"Inspired guesswork and false conclusions made from incomplete observations, and with other people, you may well have got away with it. John married relatively late in life, and statistically, a married man his age would either be married for some years or be on a second or subsequent marriage. You guessed at a longer marriage, probably because he doesn't seem the type to trade a woman in for a younger model. But if you'd bothered to look _carefully_ at John's wedding ring, you would have seen that it's extremely glossy and unscratched. I've never met a man who bothers with polishing his wedding ring, no matter how happy his marriage is. That, and the style of ring, _should_ have led you to the conclusion that it's only a couple of years old.

"John's reference yesterday to Charlotte's baptism betrayed the fact that John has a daughter, likely a baby or, at most, a toddler. Two children was an educated guess, since it's roughly the national average and likely in a family-oriented man John's age if he'd been married for more than ten years. And as if all those inspired inferences weren't enough, there's also a clear outline of a spare dummy in John's left jeans pocket and he smells strongly of talcum powder, which would otherwise be quite the anomaly if he wasn't regularly caring for an infant.

"Now onto Lestrade, shall we? He told you one big lie that, unfortunately for you, you never challenged before you started his reading. I'm frankly astounded at the amount of information you were able to get out of Lestrade's mother from the Great Beyond, considering the woman is still very much alive and living comfortably at the home of her daughter over in Sidcup.

"Now with me, it was less guesswork and more actual reading, wasn't it? That's why you wanted hold of my hands. You were analysing tiny and usually involuntary movements in them that would indicate your blatant guesses were on the right track, which is how I was able to lead you onto false information.

"For the record, my mother's name was Philippa, not Violet. She was half-English and half-French, not Irish. She died when I was sixteen, so my being a "child" at the time was wide of the mark. I have only one brother, Mycroft Linwood Holmes, and have never heard of anyone, in my family or out of it, named Sherrinford. My mother died of a stroke, quickly, on the bitumen of the carpark servicing my brother's office at Whitehall, so your vague statistical likelihood of cancer somewhere in her abdominal cavity is laughable. Now, have I missed anything, Mr. Price?"

For a few seconds nobody spoke; John broke the silence by clearing his throat, but didn't speak. Finally, Price stood up.

"I guess that's your answer on the offer, then, Mr. Holmes?" he said.

"Quite, and now you may leave." Sherlock waved his hand at him lazily. "I've had enough experience being falsely labelled a fraud to want anything to do with a _real_ fraud."

Price nodded and took a step toward the door, looking so chastened that John almost felt sorry for him. But at the last minute he turned, as though a new thought had just occurred to him.

"Mr. Holmes," he said, "what about your sister?"

Sherlock paused for half a second. Neither John nor Lestrade noticed it but Price, whose skills may have been fraudulent in one way but genuine in another, did. He was looking at Sherlock in calm defiance, like a man who had just put another's king in check and was waiting for him to notice.

"Sorry, my what?"

"Your younger sister." Price's keen eyes followed the movements of Sherlock's twitchy hands. "The one who speaks German with an American accent."

Sherlock's hand was still poised in mid-air from where he'd reached out to the coffee table to pick up the paper in contempt. The two men stared each other down.

"I'll take the case," Sherlock said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For details on Price's statement, see Chapter 15 of The Somerton Man.


	4. Want of Something

Molly put down the pipette she'd been holding and looked up blankly at the ringing landline on the lab wall, wondering when the _last_ time she'd heard it ring was. Most of the staff used their mobiles, when they couldn't just walk across the corridor and speak to one another in person. She awkwardly yanked off her latex gloves and crossed the lab to the handset. "Hello?"

"Oh, is that Dr. Hooper?"

Molly had, over the past three years, managed to create a complicated set of personal and professional names for herself. Friends and family called her "Molly". Her electricity bill and mortgage statements were made out to Dr. John and Mrs. Mary Watson, and were paid out of a debit account in the name of Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Watson. In the phone book, she and John were listed as Dr. John H. and Dr. Molly Watson. But professionally, she had never officially changed her name. She'd earned her qualifications as Molly Hooper, and those qualifications still belonged to Molly Hooper. Since most of her colleagues called her by her first name, this issue rarely came up. Only Michelle at reception, who worked three mornings a week, called her Dr. Hooper.

"Michelle," she said pleasantly. Michelle's last name was Wojciechowski, and Molly had no idea in the world how to pronounce it. "How can I help?"

"There's a Jessica Sadler here to see you, Dr. Hooper. Best come as soon as you can. She's a little distraught..."

Molly's heart sank. She would almost have preferred Michelle to tell her there was a woman at reception with a loaded gun in her hand than one who was distraught...

"I'll be right there. Hold on."

* * *

_Oh, my God. She's only a baby herself!_

Molly, later re-checking her case, was to learn that Jessica Sadler was twenty-two, but she looked no older than seventeen. She was small and fragile; a slighter woman than even Molly herself, and the hands that wrung a sodden tissue between them looked brittle. They aged her well beyond seventeen, or even twenty-two. She had a halo of fine blonde hair around her blotched, tearstained face. And, Molly noted, she was there on her own, and there was no tell-tale ring on the third finger of her left hand.

"Ms. Sadler..."

"Please," she sobbed. "Just give her back..."

Molly glanced in alarm at Michelle, who was hunched behind the reception desk and looked as if she wanted the floor to open up and swallow her.

"Oh," she gaped, putting one arm around her impulsively. "Oh, come on, come with me..."

Jessica Sadler had started to sob violently, but she put up no resistance as Molly ushered her across the foyer and into her little office. She sat her down in the nearest chair and hurried over to the water cooler to fill one of the styrofoam cups, putting it in her shaking hands.

"I'm sorry," Jessica was saying over and over. "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..."

"No, it's okay." Molly looked at her in agony of helpless pity. "It's okay. Do you want me to get you a cup of tea or something?"

Jessica shook her head, giving a great shuddering sigh.

"I'm Dr. Hooper," Molly ventured at last, realising this was possibly as calm as Jessica Sadler was ever going to get under the circumstances. "But please call me Molly. I'm one of the pathologists on duty here."

"I'm Jess," she got out. "You... you called home with a message for me... Mum took it..."

"Yes." Molly had just remembered that in the chaos of the day before, she'd forgotten to follow up the message and hadn't heard back about it until now.

"Please, I just want my baby. We wanted to have the funeral on Tuesday and... and I just want..."

Molly nodded. "Yes," she said. "Yes, of course you do. You don't have to sign anything you don't want to, Jess. I can authorise Evie's release this afternoon for you."

_But those organs have already been taken..._

"Evie?" Jessica repeated, and Molly flinched – stupid to use the little one's name so casually like that. "Were you the one who... who..."

Molly shook her head. "But I looked at the case," she said. "Atrial sepsis. I'm so sorry. There wasn't anything you could have done any differently, Jess, this was nobody's fault. I'm just going to get those papers together and we'll organise this right now, okay?"

 _What she doesn't know can't hurt her,_ Molly pleaded with herself. Jess just wanted Evie back so that she could bury her and start to heal. She'd never know those organs were missing. And telling her that they were missing – that they had in fact been dissected and then discarded as medical waste in the incinerator – that wouldn't help. It would only hurt.

But the lie made her feel sick.

As she crossed the foyer again, face burning, Molly heard her phone bleating from her pocket. She pulled it out mid-stride: text from John.

_GUILTY Doherty got life Merchant 25 years without parole_

* * *

The successful end to a case had, in the past, always been cause for some kind of celebration at 221B Baker Street. But as John handed him a cup of coffee with his pills, Sherlock reflected that these little celebrations had become rare.

Perhaps the general mood of cases he'd solved in the past year had been a little different to the romps of the past; maybe he just felt differently about them. George Edalji's conviction and sentencing of eighteen months for incest had been no cause for champagne, even if Sarah Edalji had been paroled and maintained conditional custody of her child. Renee and Daniel Jestyn, doing eight years and six months respectively for their own crimes... no cause for delight there, either. There was a kid involved who was now in the care of his grandmother. And now the knowledge that Paul Doherty would die behind bars had only brought relief.

"Thank you," he said into the coffee cup. He was staring off into space, but vaguely aware of John hovering. "Sit down," he muttered. "You're being very annoying."

John crossed the room and dropped into his armchair, sitting in silence for a few seconds. "So," he finally said. "Your sister."

Sherlock looked up. "Hmm?"

"Oh, come on, Sherlock. I'm not stupid. You were ready to write Price off as the fraud he is until he mentioned your younger sister, who speaks German with an American accent. And then you took on the case, just like that. You wouldn't have given him the time of day if he'd been wrong about it. Why didn't you tell me you had a sister?"

"Half-sister. And I didn't know," Sherlock said reluctantly, trying to hide his expression in his cup. "Not until last summer. Seems after he abandoned his actual family, my father got himself involved with some French tart, intent on improving her social standing. Married her. They reproduced, as people tend to. Her name is Christabel. I've never met her, and I don't intend to."

"Right." John nodded, taking this in. "And you didn't tell me this last summer because...?"

"You were busy," Sherlock reminded him snippily. "And you never asked."

"Should I be randomly asking you every now and again if you have any family members I've not heard about?"

Sherlock raised one eyebrow, so much as if to point out that he'd had no idea John's father had even existed until the day he'd died. "Have you?" he asked.

"Not that I'm aware of."

"Excellent." Sherlock sipped his coffee again. "I'm glad we've got that out of the way."

There was a companionable silence for a few minutes before John fidgeted again. "So how did he know?"

Sherlock scoffed. "Oh, for God's sake, don't even suggest that my mother told him from beyond the grave. Too many impossible scenarios to navigate there: that life after death exists, and exists in such a way that the dead are able and willing to converse with Harry Price; that my mother would have found out about Christabel and that she would be willing to discuss her with a stranger. Absurd. He found out from somewhere, that's all. Research. And the question becomes, John, why did Price go to such extraordinary lengths to find out about my family history?"

John looked thoughtful for a few moments. "Yeah, that is... a bit strange," he finally admitted. "But you said yourself he's a con-man. He probably just wanted to psych you out a bit. Maybe he talked to someone about you."

"The only other person who knew that information is Mycroft," Sherlock said. "He's got no reason to have given it to Harry Price."

"You don't think Price is dangerous, do you?"

"No." Sherlock leaned back in his chair. "He's aiming to humiliate me by putting on a show of the rectory being haunted and proving me and my methods wrong. I'm not going to let that happen. I've already sent down building inspectors this afternoon to have a look at the building itself."

"Just to see if they aren't leaking hallucinogens from pipes in the walls?"

"Precisely. Or using less sophisticated forms of trickery. Some are little more elaborate than a well-placed mirror. He's no doubt read your blog, so he'd know about the Baskerville incident. I doubt he'd be stupid enough to use the same method unless he had nothing else up his sleeve."

"But you're anticipating some sort of trick."

"Of course. I had a very profitable phone conversation this morning with a Mrs Smith, wife of one of the previous rectors. She said she never knew the place to be haunted in the years that she lived there, and in her opinion it's haunted by no more than 'rats and local superstition.' Her words."

"Rats. Just lovely," John said. "Looking forward to that. So who gave out the idea the rectory was haunted in the first place?"

"Mrs Smith mentioned that the first rector's children had their own legends, but I think we can write that off as childish imagination. Any building big enough and old enough will collect a few ghost stories. No, this all comes from the current rector, a Lionel Foyster. Or more correctly, from his wife, Marianne. According to Price, she's been assailed by spirits ever since she walked in the door. I think when we get there we'll find she's being _assailed_ by boredom, and possibly assailed by a more attractive man than her husband. Happy marriage, though, by all accounts. Two young children. We'll meet with them tomorrow, as soon as possible."

"Good place to start." John looked around. "Where'd Greg get to?"

"Home," Sherlock said. He'd picked up his phone and was navigating the touch-screen; it threw a pale green light on his angular face. "He needed to pack a suitcase for tomorrow. I suppose you'll want to do the same."

"So he's coming with us?"

"Of course," Sherlock said, as if the alternative had never even entered his head. "Where else would he go?"

"Yeah, about that," John said. "I think he needs to concentrate on sorting things out with Melissa right now, Sherlock."

Sherlock sighed. "He's debating whether to marry Melissa or break up with her," he pointed out. "I don't think moping about here is going to help him with that decision, so he may as well be doing something useful."

* * *

"I should only be gone until Sunday morning," Lestrade told Melissa, folding a shirt clumsily and putting it into the open suitcase on the bed. "If we need to be there any longer, I'll call and let you know."

Melissa, standing in the doorway behind him with her thin hands hugging her arms, nodded dully. "Okay. And after that, are you coming home?" she asked.

He glanced at her.

"No, I mean it, Greg. I'll sleep on the sofa if you're still pissed off at me, but it's not right that you're not even sleeping at your own house – "

"Hey." He put down the pair of socks he was holding and went over to her, touching her shoulder until she looked up at him. "I'm not pissed off at you, Mel. This is just..." He paused, struggling wordlessly for a few seconds. "Yeah," he finally said. "This is just a lot for me to take in right now. And look, I just think maybe it might be easier to take in when we're not in each other's way. That's all."

She glanced down and nodded. "Okay. But I miss you."

"I miss you, too," he admitted glumly. "You should try flatsharing with Sherlock. I'm surprised he didn't send John completely out of his mind."

Melissa smiled without any real amusement, and Lestrade turned back to the suitcase he was packing, wondering if he was going to run out of clean underwear before the trip was over. No running water. No laundry facilities. Electricity cut off... and it was barely May, and not a particularly warm one. This was going to be half a degree away from camping, and after a disastrously rainy camping trip in The Cotswolds with Julie and the kids eleven years before, he'd sworn off that forever. Melissa was still in the doorway, watching him.

"Greg – "

"No," he said, turning back to her more abruptly than he'd meant to. "No, don't you dare back down on this one, Mel. You've wanted to get married for nearly two years, so don't tell me now that it's okay and you take it back and we can go on like we have done, just 'cause you don't want to raise hell. You're not like that. Don't be like that. _Want_ something."

"You know full well that I've never had a problem with wanting things."

"Yeah." He ran his hand through his hair. _I just need to work out if I want the same thing._

* * *

"You'll keep the windows shut _and locked_ unless you're actually in the room?"

"Yes, John."

John was just then hastily packing a suitcase of his own, with a lot less care and deliberation than Greg. Molly sat on the bed beside, watching the process. Charlie was on her knee, chewing on one chubby fist and blowing raspberries.

Molly had meant her agreement and had every intention of following it, but John was watching her earnestly. "I need you to promise me, Molly," he said without smiling.

"I promise," she said. "You know I keep my promises."

"Yes, you certainly do." John paused, apparently thinking of a new concern, then exhaled and shut the suitcase with a snap. "Okay," he said briskly. "Is the gun loaded?"

"Yes, but no," she said immediately, repeating John's number one rule in gun safety: _always treat a gun as loaded, even if you're one hundred percent sure it isn't._ John's compromise on the safekeeping of the pistol was a lock on the drawer it was kept in, but the key was on a ribbon hanging from the drawer handle. Charlie would, he'd argued, need to be a prodigy to be able to unlock that drawer when she was barely nine months old; and even then, while Molly had spent the last three months learning how to prepare the pistol quickly, Charlie had no hope of accidentally loading it.

"Leave the phone handset in Charlie's room," he said. "And if... anything really sudden happens, don't waste time loading the gun. Just get yourself in there with her, bolt the door, and call 999."

" _Okay_ , John." Molly stopped herself from arcing up in irritation. "It'll be fine," she said instead. "Really."

John scrubbed his hand over his face wearily and then dropped down to sit beside her on the mattress. "I know," he said. "Sorry. Jesus, I'm starting to sound like my father."

"No, you're not."

"I really am." He took a deep breath. "It's just, you know, the first time I've been away since... all that happened."

"Yes." Molly winced as Charlie grabbed a lock of her loose hair and pulled at it. She took her daughter's fist and gently eased it open. "But Doherty's in a cell. We'll be safe."

John leaned over and kissed her cheek. "Okay. It's just, you look... I dunno, peaky. Worried. And when you look worried, you know I start..."

"I'm fine. It's just..." She stopped herself abruptly. No. No, the last thing John wanted to hear about when he was already feeling terrible about leaving was the Evie Sadler drama. He couldn't change it and would only worry about it. "Work stuff," she said vaguely. "It'll sort itself out."

"You don't want to talk about it, then?"

"No, no. I want it to just disappear."

"Okay. As always, I've got a phone and I do answer it," he reminded her. "If something happens, or you just don't want to sit here with Charlie on your own, you call me, okay? I'd take the pair of you along with me, but you know what Sherlock's like. Anyway, we're staying at the rectory itself. It's been almost cleaned out of furniture, and there's no electricity, and the water is pumped. The place will be freezing cold, and not a lot of fun for changing nappies."

"Pumped water?" Molly screwed up her nose at the idea.

"Something to do with the original design of the house. Or the ground it was built on not being suitable for mains piping. Or something. Sherlock says it's actually a pretty new building as they go – went up in the 1860s. The rector at the time and his wife raised fourteen kids in it."

Molly's mouth dropped open. "Fourteen kids?" she repeated. "With no electricity or running water?"

John nodded. "No wonder there've been legends of ghosts since the day it was built," he said. "Those kids probably invented them out of boredom - and some water-borne bacteria that brought on collective hallucinations."

"Stop pretending you're not excited about this," she scolded playfully. "You're hoping something does happen, aren't you?"

He smiled reluctantly. "Yeah, of course. I don't believe in ghosts, but that doesn't mean I don't sort of want to see one."

"What if you do see one?"

"Oh, come on, Molly... wow, you're serious?"

She shrugged, still smiling. "All because I've never seen Antarctica, doesn't mean it doesn't exist," she said brightly.

"Well, if I do see a ghost, it'll be a fake invented by Harry Price," he said. "And God help him if Sherlock catches him at it."


	5. Down the Rabbit Hole

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As per my usual writing habits, most of the details are taken from real life. However, the names of the Foyster children have been changed, since I think they may still be living. The issues Molly is investigating did NOT happen at St Bartholomew's Hospital, but something very similar did occur at other hospitals in England: most notably, Alder Hey Children's Hospital, Liverpool.

The village of Borley was little more than a hamlet. Sherlock, John and Lestrade, arriving there shortly after ten in the morning, found it consisted of barely a dozen houses along the main road, deep-rutted and soaked with recent rain. The only two places of any note seemed to be the church – a stark, squared medieval structure nestled among neat lines of gravestones - and a red-bricked, high-gabled mansion that glowered through the trees on the other side of the road. But a cheerful-looking, fiftyish man was waiting for them at the gatehouse. Very little of him could be derived at a glance, except that he had a receding hairline, stiff stance and kindly grey eyes.

"Good morning," he said, coming forward as they got out of the car.

"Sherlock Holmes." The sound of the car door echoed as Sherlock shut it. The only other sounds around them were the chirrup of sparrows and the soft purr of the spring breeze in the oak trees above. The older man offered his hand, which Sherlock accepted. "My colleagues, Dr. John Watson and Detective Inspector Lestrade." Sherlock spoke briskly, and without looking at either of his "colleagues", habitually dropping off Lestrade's first name from his introduction. Greg muttered it as he leaned over to shake the stranger's hand.

"I'm Reverend Foyster," the other said heartily. "Do call me Lionel – nobody in these parts does that "reverend" stuff. I'm sorry that my wife isn't here to greet you. She's in London for the day, but she'll probably be home this evening. Come, I suppose you want to have a look at the place. Your building inspectors were here last night and this morning, and left this for you." He handed Sherlock a piece of paper, and he slowed down to read it as John and Lestrade overtook him along the path toward the circular drive at the front of the rectory.

"All in order, then?" Lestrade asked him, nudging him to keep up.

"Just as I thought," he muttered, folding the paper and putting it in his pocket, then double-stepping to catch the others up. "Rats and local superstition."

"So no dodgy gases being leaked into the rectory to make us freak out, then."

"Apparently not."

"Shame." Lestrade grinned, then turned his attention to the rector. "How long have you lived here for, Reverend – uh, Lionel?" he asked.

"Oh, the best part of five years," Lionel said. "We're across the road at Borley Hall Manor for the time being, so I'm afraid we've not left the rectory in comfortable condition for you to have a poke around in it."

"And you were in Canada before that, Lionel?" Sherlock remarked. "You suffer from rheumatoid arthritis, and returned to England for your health."

Lionel paused. "Yes," he said, still smiling. "How did you know, Mr. Holmes?"

"Your accent is English, but your vowel sounds are sometimes confused, as if you've been among Canadian accents for quite some time. Also, I Googled you."

Lionel laughed heartily. "I suppose you Googled the whole silly situation here," he said.

"Silly?"

"Oh, psychologically this is interesting, Mr. Holmes. But in terms of paranormal phenomena, well, I suspect there's nothing in it. Still, best let Harry Price have his day in the sun. He'll be here this evening, I think. In the meantime, come in and have a look around."

* * *

 

_"Ow!"_

Lestrade winced and put his hand up to his forehead, but the projectile that had hit him firmly between the eyebrows had rolled onto the floor. Sherlock was the first to locate it and pick it up.

"What the hell was that?" Lestrade demanded.

"Sugar." Sherlock examined it in the palm of his hand, then hesitantly flicked his tongue out to taste it. "A lump of sugar. Or what's left of one, anyway. And it's still warm."

"Is that important?"

"Yes. It's an odd ghost, with hands that can warm a lump of sugar. Good aim, too." Sherlock looked up. "Thrown from over there..."

They were still more or less in the doorway, facing the foot of a winding staircase. To the left was another, narrower doorway. Sherlock strode over it, poking his head through and looking down the passage to the servant's quarters.

"See any ghosts?" Lestrade was still rubbing his forehead.

"Nothing." Sherlock sounded miffed.

"The goblins around here do seem to single out some people, for whatever reason. But really, you're lucky, Inspector Lestrade." Lionel smiled apologetically at him. "When Marianne came in for supper once last month, a coin hit her right in the eye."

"Did you see this happen?" Sherlock demanded, suddenly attentive. "I mean, did you see exactly where the coin came from, or who threw it?"

Lionel shook his head. "Thrown from over where you are somewhere," he said, gesturing to the doorway behind Sherlock. "And we were the only two in here at the time. Definitely hit her, though. She still has the mark."

"And the coin?"

"Odd thing, you know. It's an old French coin, one that I don't think I've ever seen before. It definitely doesn't belong to us, so I have no idea where it came from. I've got it here..." Lionel went to the hall stand and pulled out the drawer, fishing around for a few seconds and then drawing a coin out and putting it into Sherlock's hand. "I don't know anything about coins, sorry."

"An _Écu d'or à la Couronne_ ," Sherlock muttered, sliding the coin between his fingers.

"What's that?" John frowned.

"It's a medieval French coin, probably minted during the reign of Louis XI," Sherlock explained, handing the coin back to Lionel. "Late fifteenth century. Quite rare and valuable, and a very odd thing to find in an English country rectory."

Lionel led the party down the hall. "Oh, that's not the most odd thing you'll find here," he said. "If you'll come into the front room, I'll show you what I mean."

He led them into what had clearly once been the drawing room; it was now almost devoid of furniture, except for one sofa and a small wooden cupboard. He opened the cupboard and drew a rounded object wrapped in brown paper out very carefully with both hands.

"This is Marie," he said, speaking with hearty affection. There was a brief rustle as he removed the paper and revealed a grinning, stained human skull. "Well, we _call_ her Marie."

Lestrade gaped. "Where the hell did this come from?"

"She was in the cupboard when we moved in. Just as she was, wrapped in brown paper. Mrs Smith, the previous rector's wife, said she found her in the cupboard like that when _she_ moved in, years ago."

"And before that?" Lestrade persisted.

"Who knows? I checked with the Bull family records. According to legend, this is the skull of a French nun who occupied a nearby convent in medieval times. She fell in love with a monk from a monastery at Bures."

"Where's that?" John asked.

"About eight miles that way." Lionel pointed vaguely. "Just a little hamlet, like this one. Legend has it that the lovers tried to run away together, but they were caught. He was hanged, she was walled up in the convent and starved to death. Then the convent was demolished during the Dissolution and the skull ended up here. I don't know how true the legend is, but I think the Reverend Bull must have believed it, or at least wanted to. You can see the fireplace..."

He pointed, drawing their attention to the ornate marble centrepiece to the room. The edges were festooned with a muted criss-cross pattern and on either side, two solemn monks were carved into the marble.

"And the rest of... Marie?" Lestrade of the Yard seemed very uninterested in the Victorian excesses of the fireplace.

Lionel shrugged. "I'm afraid I don't know."

"And it clearly didn't occur to you, or to the Smiths, to turn in a found body part to the authorities," Sherlock remarked.

"You can talk," John muttered.

It had taken John only a couple of days of living at Baker Street to investigate the strange matter of the skull on the mantelpiece. Adult, female, and probably at least a hundred years old, which effectively ruled out her ever being a "friend" of Sherlock Holmes in life. Since any investigation into her death was likely to lead nowhere, John had never pursued the matter.

"I don't think we're looking at a murder victim, Lestrade. Or at least, not a recent one." Sherlock examined the skull carefully, then shoved it at John as if it had been nothing more exciting than a lump of wood. "And definitely not the nun of legend."

"Seriously?" Lionel looked surprised and a little disappointed.

"More likely to be the monk. Gendering a skull without the rest of the body is an inexact science, but judging from the ridges in the cranium and the eye sockets I would say male, mid to late thirties. John?"

"Yeah," John agreed automatically. Forensic anthropology was far more Molly's division than his own.

"Probably as medieval as the coin, however," Sherlock conceded.

"All the same," Lestrade said, "Scotland Yard would like to have a look at that, thanks very much, Reverend Foyster. I'll call the local force and have them pick it up and send it on for analysis."

Lionel shrugged. "All right," he said happily. "Now, there's something else you gentlemen may want to have a quick look at, before it disappears. Down this way..."

He led them further down the hall to an unobtrusive spot just under the staircase, in a passage so narrow the four men jostled each other for room. Sherlock, at the forefront of the group, made out the dim lines of something scribbled in a childish but cursive hand on the wall:

_Marianne_

_LT out_

Below it was inscribed another message: _I cannot understand. Please tell me more – Marianne._

The majority of the second message was in urgent capitals, except for the flowing script of Marianne's name.

"And I suppose this appeared spontaneously," Sherlock remarked to Lionel.

"Oh yes, they all do."

"They 'all' do?"

"We get quite a few of these little messages." Lionel sounded matter-of-fact. "They appear out of nowhere and disappear within a day or two, usually. Marianne and I found this one when we were unlocking the place for you this morning, just before I saw her off on the train. She wrote the reply, of course. She's done it a few times, and I did once, too."

"And does the writer respond?"

"Sometimes. Never in a way that really makes sense, though."

"How old did you say your children were, Lionel?" John broke in. Lionel grinned.

"Ashleigh is three," he said. "And Jamie is eleven months. But I – "

"Don't be stupid, John," Sherlock said. "No three-year-old can write in cursive five and a half feet off the ground. This was clearly written by an adult."

"I -"

Before John could continue, Sherlock touched his arm. "She's writing them to herself," he said, low enough that Lionel couldn't hear. "Similarities in how the letters are joined, and the way the capital M is formed. Reverend Foyster," he said in louder tones, "I need handwriting samples from everyone who has regular access to the house."

* * *

Molly rarely had the energy or inclination to examine peer reviewed autopsy files on her days off, but this was different. Logging into the intranet system of files from the time of John's departure at seven-thirty until lunchtime – with only a few interludes to feed, change and entertain Charlie in between – there were now four more names in conjuction with _Sadler._ Molly murmured them to herself, deeply troubled. They were _Tay, Askham, Khatri_ and _Moorehouse._ All of them had lost their children. So far as Molly could see, none of them had given express written permission for Barts to retain tissue from their babies.

The supervising pathologist in all four cases was the same: Professor Ross Harding. And there was another name that had come up again and again, one which made Molly feel slightly sick: Berrimer Pharmaceutical Company.

And now her upcoming evening stood on a dilemma she had never thought she would have: whether to take her own baby into the chemical-ridden morbidity of the specimen supply room of Barts pathology department, or to leave her in the overnight care of the only close friend or relative available. After nearly an hour of deliberating, she picked up the phone and dialled. Harry Watson answered it brightly.

"Molly," she said without bothering with the greeting beforehand. "To what do I owe the pleasure? Ooh, don't tell me. You've finally got sick of John and booted him out?"

"No, I – "

"Oh, my God, he hasn't knocked you up again, has he?"

Molly winced. "No," she said. "Harry, I was wondering, if you're not very busy, would you be able to come over and babysit Charlie tonight? I might be gone a while, so you'd have to sleep over, but, um..."

The silence on the end of the line conveyed more about Harry's surprise than words could have. She had been told on no less than five occasions that she was never going to be allowed to babysit Charlie unsupervised. "What's this about?" she demanded.

Molly shut her eyes and exhaled. "Promise you won't tell John," she said. "Or, well, anyone."

"Consider it promised."

"There was a little girl who died in surgery last week... we did her autopsy at Barts. Well, my boss did. And he retained her organs and he shouldn't have, Harry. It's illegal to do it without permission..."

There was another brief pause on the end of the line. "Also," Harry said, "it's really bloody horrible."

"Yes, it's really bloody horrible. And I just had a look at a few more case studies and... there were four more."

"Four more what?"

"Four more times Barts has kept something when we didn't really have permission. A brain, a liver, and... two miscarried fetuses which may have been bought from another hospital. I need to go in tonight and see if I can find any more... and see if I can find why they weren't signed off on and what happened to them after Barts took them. I can't go during the day."

"Because you'll get interrupted or... caught?"

"Exactly."

Harry floundered again for a few seconds. "Molly," she said, "if John finds out that you left a lush like me in charge of Charlie, he's going to flip his shit. Frankly, I think you'd prefer to be caught by your boss."

"I don't think so. If John asks, I'm just going to tell him the truth. I don't think you need to worry about that."

"I might... do something wrong with her, Moll."

"I trust you, and we don't have any alcohol in the house."

"At all? You know I once drank a bottle of vanilla essence, right?"

"Harry, you've been sober for nearly a year. Please, could you do this for me?"

Harry gave a light sigh. "I've missed Sprout," she admitted. "Funny little bugger she can be sometimes. When do you want me to come over?"


	6. Ghost Stories

Lionel soon left the three men to look at the rectory on their own that afternoon. Before he would commit to anything else, Sherlock brought a generator out of the car boot so that they could all plug their mobile phones in.

"This is sort of cheating, you know," John told him, though he'd plugged his phone in like the other two under the excuse that he had a young family and needed to be contactable. "I thought we were going to do this the old-fashioned way. Candles and draughts, and things that go bump in the night."

"Without any electricity, looks like there'll be plenty of bumping into things in the middle of the night," Lestrade said. "Come on, let's get our bearings."

There was much to explore – twenty-three rooms, including what seemed to be an endless supply of bedrooms and a small chapel in an upstairs corner that had apparently been used by Reverend Bull and his swarm of children for private worship.

"What, they couldn't be bothered wandering across the road to the actual church?" was Lestrade's comment, leaning out the chapel window and looking across to it. "Well, I suppose this is more convenient. Fourteen kids. Christ, Mrs. Bull was either a lunatic or a saint."

"1860s," Sherlock reminded him. "I think the Reverend Bull was more likely to be the lunatic, and his wife didn't have a lot of say in it."

"True, that. At least she had a big enough house to lose all those kids in."

The four storeys - including a sub-level dedicated to what had once been the servant's quarters, and one below consisting of windowless storage cellars – were built in a meandering sort of rectangle around a central courtyard, paved with cobblestones and now overrun with dank weeds. As they split up to explore passage after passage, even Sherlock, who knew every street in London, had once found himself in the courtyard when he had been trying to find the front door. Lestrade had been stranded there no less than three times.

"You need a compass and a map on you at all times, mate," John told him, on finding him again.

"It's like the bloody Bermuda triangle." Lestrade looked up at the second-storey windows and pointed. "So that's the chapel there? I can't navigate from the bedrooms. They all look the same."

"Chapel, yeah." John pointed to a ground-floor doorway. "That passage runs past the kitchen and on to the front door."

"So I've discovered," Sherlock broke in, and both of them jumped as he appeared in the doorway directly opposite the one John had pointed out. "Odd acoustics," he went on. "I could hear both of you talking clearly from the front drive. And a person on the stairs can be heard in the kitchen, too. It's suggestive. And so is this... come and look."

He led them through the passage he'd just come through and back out to the path. As they walked toward the drive, he pointed to what had once clearly been a ground-floor window and was now bricked up completely.

"Bricked up," John commented unnecessarily. "Why?"

Sherlock shrugged. "I suspect Lionel Foyster could tell us."

* * *

Lionel Foyster returned to the rectory at five, and seemed surprised they had even noted the bricked-up window.

"Oh, yes," he said vaguely. "That's been there since the Bulls lived here a hundred and fifty years ago. Dining room window, or it was, once."

"Yes," Sherlock said tersely. He'd already checked.

"Legend has it that they bricked it up because the ghost nun wouldn't stop peering in at them during dinner," Lionel said. "But really, it seems it was because everyone on the _road_ could see the family eating dinner."

"Did they not have curtains in the 1860s?" John wanted to know.

Lionel shrugged. "Bull was an odd thing. Suffered from narcolepsy, I've heard, and spent most of his latter days sleeping out in the summerhouse out back. Sleeping in public? Fine. But heaven help you if people saw you doing such a terrible thing as _eating_ _dinner_."

"That does seem odd," Sherlock said. "And you also seem to know a great deal about the Bulls, Reverend."

Lionel smiled, the edges of his eyes crinkling. "I'm a descendant of them, as a matter of fact... and I do a lot of genealogical studies."

"A descendant? That's a bit of a coincidence," Lestrade said. "I mean, that you'd be a minister of the same parish all these years later."

"Not at all. We're a churchy family, as it were. Three of the original Bull sons went into the church, and then their sons, and so on. I suppose it's only natural that the men who answer the parish call of Borley are people who were raised here and can stand the place." Lionel grinned.

"Were you actually raised here at the rectory, then?" Sherlock asked.

"Long Melford, nearby. But I did visit here a lot while I was growing up. A great-uncle of mine had the parish then, and he lived here with his wife and unmarried sisters, Aunt Alice and Aunt Frances."

"And did you ever know anything odd to happen here when you were a child?" Sherlock persisted.

"Not that I can remember, but I'm not psychic, like Marianne is." Lionel spoke without any apparent sarcasm. "But Eric could tell you more about his own experiences, too."

"Eric?" John echoed.

"Eric Smith, the previous rector. He's actually my second cousin, though I didn't know him well until Marianne and I took the parish from him."

"But you know him well now?"

"Quite. Actually, he and his wife are the ones hosting us at the Manor, until you can chase the ghosts out for us. I've just come over to say – Marianne and the kids are home, and Price has just arrived, and the Smiths would like to invite you to dinner. I doubt you'll get much of a feed here."

* * *

Harry Price had very much arrived at the manor and was in the middle of being his usual overbearing self, though Sherlock noted with some relief that he'd apparently come alone. After giving him an icy greeting, he dismissed him and gave his attention to the other members of the dinner party, and to the house itself.

Of the Smiths and their home at Borley Manor, Sherlock quickly discovered very little could be said and even less of it was interesting. But Marianne Foyster was another matter altogether.

She had been sitting in the drawing room armchair as the guests greeted her husband and the Smiths, watching them, an open book resting idly on her knees. Sherlock, finally able to give her enough attention to inspect her, found her to be a dark-haired woman in her early thirties. She was plain-faced and simply dressed, her figure spoiled by the rigours of producing and raising two small children who were presumably upstairs. Stubby fingers. Muddy complexion. So far, Sherlock thought, completely ordinary. But as she finally stood up to greet the newcomers, her eyes lit up into keen intelligence.

"Mr. Holmes," she said, shaking his hand. Her voice was a good match for her appearance, and nothing remarkable, with faint hints of an Estuary accent. "You look just like your photograph."

"I hope I live up to the hype," Sherlock said dryly.

"So do I," she said. "Somebody's got to get to the bottom of this." She glanced at Price, who was just then looking at the skirting boards and remarking to Eric Smith that he could definitely feel an unearthly presence in the house. "Because I doubt it's going to be him," she said in tones barely above a whisper. Her face sprouted unexpected dimples when she smiled.

"I suspect that there's very little to get to the bottom of, Marianne," Sherlock responded.

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Oh, your husband may totally believe you're psychic, but I'm afraid you're going to have to work hard to keep up that pretence with me," he said, leaning in close. "I think you'll be a Type C client."

"Type C?"

"Yes. There are three types of clients. Type A – overflowing with gratitude. Type B – No idea in the world just happened, but pleasantly ignorant. And Type C – ready to take out a contract on me for exposing their own interests. You may regret asking me here, Marianne."

"I didn't ask you here," she said. "Harry Price did, and for some reason, Lionel agreed to it. But still, I'm very interested in how you're going to go about this investigation, Sherlock."

Sherlock was taken aback briefly - he'd rarely seen clients who were anxious to call him by his first name. He was about to respond when Mabel Smith, a bustling, asthmatic little woman in her sixties, appeared at his elbow. "I forgot to ask Lionel to check," she said anxiously. "You're none of you vegetarians, are you?"

"Not last I checked, Mrs. Smith," Sherlock said politely. There was something about Mabel Smith that reminded him of Mrs. Hudson.

"Oh, I'm so glad. I was wondering what on earth you'd eat if you were – I'm always like that, never ask these things until it's too late. Can never get a meal on in time, either, seems. Everything's in danger of being overcooked if we leave it for much longer. I'm sorry to rush you to the table."

* * *

Nobody objected to being rushed to the table. Judging from the aromas coming from the kitchen, Mabel Smith might have poor time management, but she had excellent culinary skills. Her husband Eric was a wizened little man of seventy-two, with a deep voice that belied his small stature, and a laugh that was usually funnier in itself than whatever it was he was laughing at. Looking at him, Lestrade's mental images of the original Bull family underwent a rapid readjustment. They probably weren't a family of sober no-fun Puritans taking cold showers every day, after all. More than likely, they were a bunch of bored kids with a sense of humour like their descendants' and a whole rectory full of weird acoustics and confusing passages to wreak havoc in, at the expense of gullible parishioners.

"Seen any ghosts yet?" Eric Smith asked him. Lestrade had already noticed that when he was addressing the three of them in general, Smith tended to direct his remarks at him. Probably, he thought idly, some sort of respect thing. He was the only one of them who had an official police title, since Consulting Detective and Consulting Detective's Handler weren't really ones respected by the higher powers of the Force.

"No." He smiled awkwardly. "But I'm hopeful."

Eric laughed, a loud donkey-bray, and slapped his knee as if Lestrade had just made an hilarious joke. "You don't really believe in that sort of thing, do you?" he boomed. Lestrade fidgeted uncomfortably, wondering if he was about to offend someone.

"Dunno," he said finally. "You've got to admit that strange things can happen sometimes. When I was..." He stopped, glancing at Sherlock. But Marianne, who was sitting in between Sherlock and her husband, was smiling. She clasped her hands.

"Don't stop, Inspector," she said eagerly. "I love hearing about this this sort of stuff. You say you've seen a ghost?"

"No," Lestrade admitted, shifting again. "I don't even know if I believe in them, but... well. My old man was a carpenter, and when I was a teenager, I'd sometimes go with him on the job on the weekends and holidays. He thought I'd go into the business too, probably."

"You must have disappointed him so much," Sherlock said drily.

"Sherlock," John murmured from beside him. He'd just then been having a lively conversation with Harry Price about how religious beliefs were not in fact the same thing as believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden, but both of them were now listening in.

"So anyway, one summer just before I left school, we were on a project out in the countryside near Taunton. Some guy had an old manor house out there and there was a sort of cottage on his property called The Dovecote," he said. "Apparently when the monasteries got dissolved, the guy who owned the property then gave refuge to a dozen monks from a nearby monastery that got burned down. They lived there for a few years, then seems they wandered off to find somewhere else, and who knows what happened to them after that."

"Ah, another religious haunting," Price said. "It's just as I was saying to you, Dr. Watson. Religious feeling produces powerful emotions that can sometimes remain in the world long after the people who felt that way are gone. I suspect that's what we're dealing with in this case."

John refused to take the bait, and after a pause, Lestrade continued. "Anyway," he said, "so I went with my dad – he was the foreman, about to retire - and about six other guys from the construction company to relay the floor in the Dovecote. Pretty standard job to begin with, nothing memorable about it. But then we'd come in of a morning or after a break, and someone'd been moving all the tools."

"Moving them?" John echoed.

"Well, not throwing them around or anything. I thought it was like someone was coming in, picking them up, having a look, and putting them down again."

"Likely someone was," John countered. "Summer. Bored teenagers. Mucking around on construction sites can be a great way to pass the time."

"I know. But we locked the place up when we weren't there, and Dad had the key."

"But the man who lived in the manor also had a key," Sherlock broke in.

"Yeah, but he was in New Zealand at the time. So anyway, Dad said we should lay down chalk dust to see if we were imagining things, or if the tools really were moving around when we weren't there."

"And were they?"

"Yeah. Not by much... like I said, pick up, put down. But definitely moved. We got the floor finished and when the guy who owned it came back to pay Dad for his work, Dad said something about the whole business to him, and he didn't seem surprised. He just said, 'Oh, that was more than likely just the monks.' And here's the other thing. You can imagine eight guys working with hammers and nails and saws and drills, well, you get a lot of... well it's hardly ever polite, is what I mean. But the whole time we were working that job, everyone was so mellowed-out. I dunno what it was, but it ended up in more pleases and thank-yous than I've ever heard in one place in my life, and nobody swore up a storm, not even the guy who ended up smashing his thumbnail with a hammer. I can't explain it."

* * *

"None of that actually happened," Sherlock remarked to Lestrade as they walked back across the road at nine-thirty. Although Harry Price had taken a hotel room in nearby Sudbury, he had suggested he come with them to sit in vigil at least until midnight, awaiting any forthcoming paranormal phenomena.

John considered "sitting in the cold and dark and not speaking for hours" to be the equivalent of night patrol without the adrenaline, and therefore possibly the most boring thing he'd ever heard of, but Price had been insistent. The rectory in front of them was silent and still, and Sherlock was fumbling in his pocket for the keys to the front door.

"Hmm?"

"The Dovecote. You were making that up."

"Wasn't," Lestrade protested.

"Always so ready to dismiss anything you don't understand, Mr. Holmes," Price said amiably. "I think of the three of you, Inspector Lestrade might be the most psychically receptive."

"He's definitely the most receptive to having things thrown at him," John said.

"Oh, don't try to butter him up." Sherlock ignored John's remark. "You'll remember that Inspector Lestrade is also the one who fooled you into making psychic contact with a woman who isn't even dead."

"Look," Lestrade broke in before a squabble could erupt. "I'm not saying there were ghost monks floating around, I just told it how I remember it. Probably the property owner was playing a trick or something. I can't guarantee there wasn't a third set of keys. I think it's the most likely answer. I just think it's a lot of effort to go to, just to play a trick on some carpenters... Christ, it's dark in here," he muttered as they stepped into the hall.

As John lit a match and fumbled for the candle on the hall stand, Sherlock suddenly shushed them to silence.

John flinched as the match burned his fingers and shook it out, the lit candle in his other hand. As he raised it to see the others better, they heard it – a dull thump from one of the rooms upstairs.

In the flickering candlelight, John and Lestrade looked mutely at each other.

After a pause, there was another thump, louder than the first. Then a choked, wet gasp, and what sounded like someone dragging something heavy across the floor above.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, slowing down on the updates now :) Thanks for reading! x


	7. Nun's Walk

Sherlock snatched the candle out of John's hands and charged up the staircase with it, the flame streaming out like a tiny comet. By the time John and Lestrade had made their way up, Price fumbling along behind, Sherlock was in action, flinging open the closed bedroom doors and searching around in the darkness beyond them. He emerged from the third bedroom from the top of the stairs just as John reached the landing.

"Anything?" John asked him hopefully.

Sherlock shook his head. In the light of the candle, his sharp cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes made him look almost ghoulish. "Nothing."

"Well, keep looking, then." Lestrade now had his mobile phone out and was using it as a torch. He opened the next door unconcernedly and stepped inside. "We all heard it, so something had to have made it, for God's sake."

"What is it you were saying about ghosts before, gentlemen?" Price asked, a little smugly. But Lestrade, re-emerging from the second bedroom door and reaching out for the door handle of the third, scoffed.

"I'm not worried about ghosts," he said. "I'm a bit worried a real human being was up here getting themselves smacked over the head, 'cause that's exactly what it sounded like. John?" John had by now also got his phone out and had just emerged from the fourth room along. He shook his head.

"Rats," Sherlock suggested a little weakly, running his hand through his hair and looking around as if he expected the solution to be written on the wallpaper. "Just rats..."

"Yeah, really heavy rats," John agreed.

"We've never heard the natural sounds this house makes at night, and we still can't eliminate the possibility of fraud," Sherlock said crossly. "We saw this afternoon that the house has strange acoustics, and can't be..."

He trailed off. From the kitchen directly underneath him, there was a high, tinny clanging noise, echoing sharply in the still house.

"All right," Sherlock said loudly. "That really is the rats. The servant's bells are suspended on old wires that run inside the walls. The rats run along the wires, and their weight is what sets off the bells. Mabel Smith told me that tonight."

"I think I'd prefer the ghosts, if I'm honest," John muttered. In the three years he'd spent in Afghanistan, he'd largely got used to the spiders and cockroaches and scorpions and snakes. But he had never learned to accept the rats.

Sherlock looked at Harry Price, who held his hands up in protest. "Don't look at me," he said. "I've been beside you the whole time. You can't blame this on me!"

"That sounded quite defensive. Nobody has accused you," Sherlock said. Then he took a deep breath and scruffed up his hair. "Well," he conceded, "there's nobody here, and we don't have enough light to search the house until morning."

"So what do we do?" John asked.

"What we always intended," Sherlock replied. "We sit and we listen. I think it would be better if we split up, though, at opposite ends of the floor. John, Lestrade, you two take one of the bedrooms at that end of the corridor..." He pointed down the passage. "Mr. Price, I think you and I should team up for tonight. I'd like to keep an eye on you."

"Master bedroom," John said suddenly.

Sherlock frowned. "What?"

"You two take the master bedroom. It's on this side of the house, and it's the only one I've seen with an actual bed in it," John said. "Don't make me nag you, Sherlock."

* * *

 

"So. My German-speaking, American sister."

Harry Price, fiddling with a small digital recorder in the corner of the master bedroom, he looked up. Sherlock had been sitting upright and diligent on the mattress of the king-sized bed, but had eventually given in and was now sprawled out on the mattress like a tiger in the sun.

"I'm sorry?" Price said innocently.

"My sister. How did you know about her?"

Price looked confused for a second. "Oh," he said at last. "You know how, Mr. Holmes."

"No, try again," Sherlock said. "You researched me. And given my father's previous line of work, you went to a lot of trouble with it. I'm only going to ask you the following question once, Mr. Price. Why?"

Price was silent for a few seconds. "You can say it all you like," he said finally. "But I didn't research you, Mr. Holmes. I know almost nothing about you. And I've got no reason to lie about that."

Sherlock scoffed and sat up awkwardly. He'd taken his much-hated pills an hour before, and was a little light-headed for it. "You've plenty of reasons to lie," he said. "You make money out of telling people lies."

Price smiled. "You're quite right about the show," he said. "We use actors, plant spies among the real members of the audience... you name it. Are you really so shocked about that? It's television. People watch to be entertained. Psychic phenomena can't be produced on cue, that's the problem with it. And nobody's going to want to watch a show where nothing happens, so we help it along. But to say that this makes everything fraudulent... well, that makes about as much sense to me as claiming that the existence of a hundred servants proves that there is no master."

Sherlock turned his head toward him, but said nothing.

"I've got genuine abilities," Price said. "I've had them since I was a kid. When I was two, I told my mother all about the house she grew up in as a kid. They moved to the other side of England before she was married, and I'd never seen a photograph of it. How do you explain that?"

"I doubt you remember this," Sherlock said, uncomfortably reflecting on memories of his own from early childhood. "You have only your mother's word for it that this even happened. And even then, I imagine confirmation bias comes into it. You said what she wanted you to say about the house. She believed in your abilities, didn't she?"

"Does," Price corrected him. "She's eighty-four, but still kicking. And of course she does. You don't see a person prove over and over again that these things are real and still deny it. Wouldn't you agree that _that_ would be an example of confirmation bias?"

Sherlock grunted and rolled back over carefully, looking up at the dim outlines of the threadbare bed-canopy above.

 

* * *

 

"So, Mel...?"

"Shut it, John," Lestrade said crossly from where he was curled up on the floor, trying to doze with only a sleeping bag for a mattress. He'd just decided that this was in some ways worse than camping – grass was softer than floorboards. "I don't know yet."

"Why're you dragging your feet?" John asked. "No, I mean, why _really_. 'Cause Molly says Mel isn't buying that whole 'kids' thing, and I'm not sure I'm buying it either."

Lestrade shifted feverishly, trying to find a more comfortable position. Across the room from him, John was sprawled out on his sleeping-bag mattress, as content as if it were a king-sized bed in the Ritz penthouse.

"I really buggered things up with Julie," he finally said.

"She's the one who had an affair or three."

"Is she?"

There was silence for a few seconds. "Jesus, really?" John finally blurted out. "Who was it, Donovan?"

Lestrade groaned and rolled over again. "All because Donovan was giving it to Anderson doesn't mean she was giving it to everyone," he said. "No, it wasn't Donovan. It was Lucy Parnell, if you really have to know."

"Parnell? Gregson's sergeant?"

"Yeah. She used to be my constable, until all that happened. Oh, I mean, nothing _happened_. It was only two or three times, and she didn't get all stupid about it and want me to leave Julie and the kids for her. It got awkward, that's all. I suggested she apply to change teams. Donovan got transferred across to me."

"Did Julie know?"

"Not that she's ever said. Like I said, it was over and done in a week. But that was before she started sleeping with Mark, so..." He trailed off.

"Okay," John said. "But that would have been years ago, right? Donovan's always been your partner, as long as I've known you."

"Going on nearly ten years ago."

"So what, you're worried you won't be able to keep the cue in the rack? If you haven't been cheating on Mel before now, I dunno why you'd want to start just because you put a ring on her finger."

"I've also got it on good authority that I'm a complete arse to be married to."

"Yeah, well, that's why you don't go to your exes for a character reference."

Lestrade sat up, yanked at the sleeping bag, and flopped back down again. "Could be wrong here, but I think I told you to shut it about five minutes ago." "Fine." John yawned and paused, listening to the servant's bells clinking gently in the dark house. In the roof above, something made a heavy swooping noise, and then a squeak. Owls, of course. They always made such freakish noises when they were hunting... and hopefully, they were going to take care of the rats. Lestrade lay tossing and turning for what seemed like hours after John had started to gently snore.

* * *

 

"Greg..." John shook him hard, then shoved him. With a reluctant groan, Lestrade stirred and opened his eyes.

"Wossisit?" he mumbled.

"Greg, get up, I need a bloody witness for this!"

At the word _witness_ , Lestrade opened his eyes properly and sat bolt upright. Few things had caused more trouble for his career than an unreliable or non-existent witness. John had scrabbled to his feet and was now standing at the window, a lit candle and candle-holder in his hand, beckoning him over.

"What?"

"Hurry up!"

Lestrade got to his feet with a little difficulty, joining him at the window and looking out. It was the early hours of the morning and still dark; on the horizon only a light or two from a farmhouse twinkled. The garden below sat in silent repose, the close-mown grass giving onto an inky smear of trees that bordered the property. Away to the right and down the slope was the skeleton of the old summerhouse, where Reverend Bull had dozed away his last days; but neither John nor Lestrade were looking at the summerhouse. Near the border of trees, something pale was moving.

"Oh, _bollocks_ ," Lestrade said under his breath. "I'll never say it. I'll never say I saw it..."

Only a woman could have walked with that kind of slow grace. She was slender and tall, her garments falling in bright, pale billows. There was a pearly luminescence about her, from the cloth covering her head to the tips of her skirt that trailed like moonbeams over the dark grass. Her face was turned away from the house, but even so, she seemed young and beautiful.

John turned, the candle still in his hands, and reached for the door. "Come on," he muttered, not waiting to see if Lestrade was keeping up as he rushed down the landing and the stairs as fast as he could in the near-darkness. Trying to find the back door was harder than expected, especially in the dark; by the time John had located it, Lestrade was on his heels. The door was unlocked, but stiff and reluctant to open, even against John's shoulder. After a few jolts, it gave way suddenly, and they both spilled out into the chilly rectory garden.

She was still there.

Still maybe fifty yards off, and taking no notice at all of the arrival of two loud strangers. She had her back to them both and was picking her way across the grass toward the line of trees, both arms hanging simply by her sides. In the few breathless seconds that followed, both John and Lestrade noticed that her bare feet made no sound on the grass beneath them.

"Do something," John said through his teeth.

"Do what?"

"I don't know, talk to her or something!"

"Why me?"

"Because you're the police -"

"What do you expect me to do, then – arrest her for being a ghost?"

John rolled his eyes. "God, fine," he hissed. He had taken three or four hesitant steps toward the apparition when, upstairs, a thud and a hoarse male cry broke the silence.

John turned on his heel and tore back inside, with Lestrade following behind. He took the stairs two at a time, fumbling along counting doors in the corridor until he burst into the master bedroom without knocking. In the weak halo of the candle he held and the one sitting on Price's suitcase in the opposite corner, he found Sherlock sitting on the floor. He was breathing hard, supporting himself on his palms. Price, fully dressed except for his jacket and shoes, stood beside him.

"What the hell happened?" John demanded, dropping to his knees beside Sherlock.

"I don't know," Sherlock muttered. "You what?"

"I don't know!" he exclaimed. "We were standing at the window..."

John glanced over his shoulder at Lestrade. "You saw the nun, too?"

"We were standing at the window," Sherlock repeated staunchly. "Something grabbed me by the arm and threw me back onto the floor... oh, for God's sake, it wasn't Harry. He was beside me at the time, and couldn't have pulled at me like that."

"Can you get up?" John asked.

"Um. Maybe."

"Mr. Price," John said as he helped Sherlock to his feet, "you might have heard that Sherlock broke his back last Christmas. So if I find out you've been -"

Sherlock cut him off with a cry.

"That hurt?"

"No, I make these noises for fun sometimes," Sherlock snapped at him, reaching out to take hold of one of the bed posts. John looked at him carefully for a few moments, as if weighing something up.

"I'm going to the car for my case," he finally said. "Greg, gimme the keys." Lestrade took the candle out of his hands and went back along the corridor to the bedroom they'd been sleeping in. "I'm giving you a cortisone injection."

"Oh, for God's _sake_ – "

"You'll take the cortisone, Sherlock, or we're going back to London. Tonight."

"I'd like to see you make me." Sherlock's pupils narrowed with vim. But John smiled.

"Oh, I won't need to," he said. "I'll just ring Mycroft now, at..." He checked his watch. "At half-past two in the morning, and tell him you've been thrown onto the floor and done your back in. I'm pretty sure _he_ could make you."

"You wouldn't dare," Sherlock seethed, sitting down gingerly on the mattress just as Lestrade returned and put the car keys and candle in John's hands.

"You sure you want to go out there on your own?" he asked him. But John rolled his eyes.

"There's no such thing as a ghost nun."

"But we saw – "

"We really didn't. Don't move, Sherlock."

As he hurried along the gravel front walk toward where the car was parked, listening to the sound of the gravel under his shoes, John cast a glance or two around the side of the building where they'd last seen the ghostly figure. Once he thought he caught a glimpse of silver from amid the trees lining the property, but there was no time to speculate. He opened the car boot with a clunk, grateful for the familiar sound and the beam of orange light it spilled onto the inside contents.

Most of their luggage had been taken inside already, but there were a few items here and there that they hadn't yet bothered with. As he lifted his case out, something caught John's attention – a soft glisten of hard metal showing through the gap in a half-open, green hessian travel-bag. It looked almost like...

He frowned, reached over to pull it out, and found himself holding a high-powered Beretta pistol.


	8. A Dangerous Game

"Greg, I think you should probably take Mr. Price back to his hotel now."

John had just returned to the rectory and was standing in the shadowy doorway, arms folded, medical case dumped casually at his feet. Lestrade glanced briefly over his shoulder at him, then registered the look on his face. Sighing, he took the keys that John held out to him. "Okay, Harry," he said. "I'm pretty sure you're done here."

Price frowned. "What's going on?" he asked, as curious as a child. He was looking between Sherlock and John, but neither man so much as glanced at him.

"Obviously it's none of your business, or else we'd be telling you about it." Lestrade bounced the car keys in his hand. "Come on. That's enough excitement for one night."

Price followed Lestrade out of the room; they made slow progress down the dark stairs. John waited until he could hear the car being started before he drew the gun out of his belt and held it out to Sherlock, barrel down. "Sherlock," he said. "What the hell is this?"

Sherlock glanced at it, then raised his chin. "It appears to be a Beretta Px4 Storm," he said snippily.

"Yes, as a matter of fact, that's _exactly_ what it is." John spoke quietly. "It's not mine, and it isn't Greg's. So do you want to go ahead and tell me why you're suddenly carrying a weapon? _How_ did you get it?"

"How do you think?"

John filtered through various options in his head. Even on the black market, guns like this were difficult to find and purchase. Not the Homeless Network, then, which left one realistic alternative.

"Why would Mycroft give you a semi-automatic pistol?" he demanded.

"One may as well ask why it is that _you_ see the need to be armed at every opportunity."

"I'm _not_ armed at every opportunity," John said through gritted teeth. "And I certainly didn't bring a gun on what was supposed to be a harmless ghost hunt!"

"For God's sake, why are you making an issue out of this?" Sherlock put his face in his hands for a few seconds. "Look, after... I now carry a pistol for my personal protection. Does that shock you?"

John grimaced. "Protection, yeah? Well, a lot of good it'll do to protect you when it's in the car boot."

"Oh, make up your mind. Either you're concerned that I carry it or concerned that I don't!"

"I'm _concerned_ that you've now got a deadly weapon at your disposal and you're just leaving it lying around like it's a toy! You did _not_ need to bring a pistol on this case, and you carrying a gun around when you never did before is..." John trailed off, scrubbing one hand over his face.

"Is what?" Sherlock challenged him quietly. "You know as well as I do that I don't have PTSD."

"I'm not a psychiatrist," John said in much calmer tones. "But I do know you've had a rough few months, and if you're carrying this around for protection, you're as scared as hell of _something_. I also know you're an idiot who once scratched your head with the barrel of a loaded gun."

"I did not."

"You did. With the safety off. And your finger on the trigger." John took a deep breath. "We've talked about this, Sherlock," he said. "If there's some problem, something you're afraid of -"

"Will you stop treating me like a _bloody child!"_

"I will when you stop _acting_ like one! When you start looking after yourself, taking your medication the way you're meant to, going to doctor's appointments, eating and sleeping properly, and not smuggling around illegal weapons behind my back! Do you seriously think I _like_ having to worry about you all the time? You're more trouble to look after than Charlie is!"

Sherlock glanced up at him sharply, and, just for a moment, John could see that he was wounded by that remark. "Well," he said bitingly. "I'm glad you finally told me what you really think of me. If I'm too much trouble for you to be bothered with, you're welcome to go home to your family."

John was silent for a few seconds. Then he nodded. "Okay," he said.

"... What...?" Sherlock suddenly looked alarmed.

"I don't know if you noticed or cared, but I actually made a sacrifice to come out here with you," John said. "So it's no hardship to go home. You and Greg enjoy yourselves without me, won't you?"

"... John...?"

But John was already halfway down the corridor by this time. Sherlock got up carefully, picking up the candle and following him. "For God's sake," he said as he arrived in the dark bedroom doorway. "Don't be ridiculous. I need you in on this..."

John had been rolling up the sleeping bag he'd been using. He stood back up and turned to him, one eyebrow poised. "Oh, you _need_ me?" he said. "Really?"

"Yes, really. Do you think I'd burden myself with a partner on investigation for any other reason?"

"I was sort of hoping you "burden" yourself with me because you're my friend." John chuckled grimly and shook his head. "How stupid of me. Of course, you don't have friends."

Sherlock sucked in a breath through his teeth, and it was totally unrelated to the jolt his spine had just taken. "Sorry," he mumbled.

"Yes," John said. "I'm sure you are. Just like you're sorry every time you mouth off. Doesn't stop you from doing it the next time, does it?"

"You're an utter bastard for making me say this," Sherlock said, all in one low breath. "But I am _sorry_ , all right? I've – oh, God!"

Sherlock's tone of voice had changed so abruptly that John looked up. Sherlock held the candle up against the wallpaper next to him in breathless silence. Taking a step forward, John could see dim, cursive letters slowly appearing against the background of blue ribbons and pink roses.

_Lestrade help lights mass prayers_

* * *

 

At dawn, Molly slid wearily into the driver's seat, slammed the door shut and pulled out her phone. No texts or calls from Harry, which was a good thing – Charlie was probably behaving. All the same, she pulled up Harry's mobile number. She answered a little groggily after three rings.

"Christ, Molly, it's half-past seven," she yawned.

"Sorry..."

Harry paused. Then, in much more alert tones, she demanded, "hey, are you all right?"

"Yes," Molly said. She swiped at the tears itching her cheeks and drew a soft breath. "I'm okay. I just... would you be able to hold on for another hour or two? I need to go and talk to someone, but I shouldn't really bring Charlie."

"Not a problem." Harry yawned again. There was a shuffle on her end of the line and a few muted footsteps. "Yep," she said in lower tones. "She's still fast asleep."

"How did she go?"

"Not a fan of pumpkin mash, apparently, judging from the way she threw it across the kitchen."

"... She threw it?"

"Oh, is that a new one? I'm honoured... and a word of warning, I think a lot of toddler tantrums are incoming, 'cause she's even more stubborn than her dad is, bless her. But not to worry, she likes chocolate custard, and Toby helped me get the pumpkin mess off the floor... is there nothing that cat won't eat? Anyway. No, she was really okay, Molly. I let her stay up and watch Broadchurch with me. I taped it for you."

"Thank you." Molly wiped her cheeks again. "I'll be home as soon as I can, Harry."

* * *

Molly arrived at Mycroft Holmes's Whitehall office just after eight o'clock.

She had an idea that he always started work very early, but that he didn't always work from the office. Even if he was there, she had no idea how she was going to convince security that she was, for what it was worth, a friend of Mycroft's and needed to see him. Stephen Hassell's replacement was Establishment: a straight-spined, hard-mouthed man a few years older than Mycroft, and one who would never stand for nonsense. But to Molly's surprise, once she had explained who she was, he leaned over his desk and buzzed through to Mycroft's private office. After a few seconds, the man himself answered.

"Yes?"

"A Mrs. Watson is here to see you, sir. Are you available?"

"Mrs. Watson?" Molly heard the emphasis on her marital status, and suddenly remembered something Harry had told her during the trial. According to her, Mycroft had taken up her offer of a "listening ear" since the kidnapping of Stephen and Sherlock. But Mycroft, being himself, would never allow himself to divulge what was on his mind.

"Just phones me up and sits on the line, saying nothing," Harry had told her. "Oh, of course, I talk, just to give him something to listen to. Last Tuesday night, he was on for nearly twenty minutes. I got out the Bible and read out all the smutty bits to him."

Once he'd clarified who he was about to speak to, Mycroft asked that Molly be let in. His PA directed her down the corridor, amid a bewildering array of identical doors. Before she could get herself lost, one of them opened, and he beckoned to her.

"Molly," he said. "Good to see you again."

Molly scurried in ahead of him, wondering if she looked like the crying wreck she felt. Mycroft didn't remark on it or seem to notice it as he ushered her into a deep, padded armchair. He went to his desk, but stood in front of it, leaning back against it with his arms folded. Entirely businesslike.

But there was one thing that Molly, as well as everyone else, had registered for the first time during the Doherty and Merchant trial. It had been perfectly obvious to everyone for years that Mycroft Holmes dyed his hair. But now, silver, wiry little hairs sprouted unchecked over his ears and temples.

"How can I help you?" he asked.

She checked herself, suddenly feeling guilty. "I'm sorry," she blurted out. "I know you're at work and it's early and..."

"Not at all. My schedule is flexible. What can I do for you?"

"I just found out that my boss is... is doing something," she faltered. "Something horrible."

"And what's that?"

"Last week, a baby named Evie Sadler died during heart surgery, and we did the autopsy at Barts. And Professor Harding... he's the lab director, and he did the autopsy... he removed the thoracic organs without permission from the parents. And when I said I couldn't sign off on the peer review because of it, he told me that it was too late and those organs had already been... used... and destroyed."

Mycroft raised one eyebrow.

"And, well, I went through the records on the intranet and found four more autopsies he's done where organs got removed without permission. And then last night, I went to the lab, I found fourteen more that couldn't be accounted for. There were livers and thyroid glands and hearts and fetuses and..."

She trailed off, wiping her eyes again. Mycroft whipped a couple of tissues out of the box on his desk and handed them over unsympathetically. She wiped her eyes with them, unsurprised to find them as tough and abrasive as Mycroft himself often was.

"But the thing is," she said, "I looked for evidence that Evie Sadler's organs had been experimented on, the way Harding said they were. But no experiments on thoracic organs had been done on Smithfield campus since before Evie died, so he was lying to me."

"Go on."

"And... while I located some organs in the specimen closet that didn't have proper paperwork, a lot of them just seemed to go missing after they were taken, with no records of where they went. But Professor Harding has been liaising with a pharmaceutical company, Berrimer. They have a testing facility in Hampshire and I – oh God, I think Professor Harding is sending them on to Berrimer in exchange for funding for the department..."

"In other words, he's trafficking human organs."

"Yes. And I – I've been doing some reading. Horrible things can happen to whistleblowers. They get blacklisted from work. They get death threats. Their houses get burned down... some of them have to go into witness protection..." She put her hand to her mouth for a second and swallowed down. "I need your help, Mycroft. you know things, and can do things..."

Mycroft opened his mouth to reply, then promptly shut it again. He was looking at her with something very like reluctant admiration.

"I protected Sherlock," she went on. "For two years. And it nearly cost me my marriage..."

"Yes. That was very regrettable. I'm sorry that we asked so much of you."

"I don't regret saving Sherlock," she said. "But you told me I'd helped you, and you would help me if you ever had the chance. I need that now."

Mycroft got up and moved to the other side of his desk. He opened a drawer, but appeared to be shuffling paperwork around rather than actively looking for something. "Molly," he said, "there are laws in this country protecting whistleblowers. But you're quite right – not everyone regards those laws. If you speak out against the practices of this one professor, you may find yourself uncovering something bigger than you ever imagined, or can handle."

"I know." Molly made use of the tissue again.

"By law, a person cannot be fired for whistleblowing. In reality, if this goes to trial, you'll almost certainly lose your position at the hospital. You will probably be put on administrative leave to begin with, and if they don't find some excuse to fire you, you may find that your relationship with your coworkers becomes unpleasant enough that you'll feel that resignation is your only option. You've worked at Barts for a very long time, haven't you?"

"Since I was a student. My dad was a pathologist... he used to take me there when I was a little girl."

"I see. So you've a sentimental attachment to the place as well," Mycroft pointed out practically. "In addition, you need to count the cost of this on your family. You're what they refer to as the "breadwinner", aren't you?"

Molly nodded, reflecting, and not for the first time, how odd it sounded to hear herself described so. The breadwinner. It sounded like she spent fourteen hours a day down a coal pit.

"So if you find yourself without work, your family income may be compromised," Mycroft said. "You may be obliged to push John into work he's not willing to take. John is well-known to the legal system and the media, which may complicate matters. You also have a young child, and, if my observations are correct, you're intending to have another in the next twelve months." Molly flushed momentarily, but Mycroft appeared not to notice, and continued. "Any decisions you make on the case will necessarily have to take all this into account," he pointed out, crossing his arms thoughtfully. "In short, my advice is that you need to draw up a risk assessment before you decide whether to speak out. And while marital relationships are not my area of expertise, I'd suggest you also discuss this with your husband before you do anything."

"Oh, yes." Molly wiped her eyes again. "Of course. Of course I would – will."

Mycroft smiled briefly. "It never fails to surprise me, what people will do out of a sense of duty and altruism," he said. "So, although we're still talking in vague terms, if you want to bring this matter to the justice system, I'll work within my powers to... protect you from reprisals. But do think it over, Molly. This could be a dangerous game, and not for Professor Harding."


	9. Writing on the Wall

It was eight o'clock in the morning when, after a few hours of restless sleep, Sherlock and John decided to tell Lestrade that he'd been called out by name on the spare bedroom wallpaper. He took things surprisingly well.

"Sherlock, Marianne did _not_ write this," he pointed out unnecessarily, running his fingertips over the writing, which did not smudge.

"No." Sherlock glanced down. "Quite aside from the fact that we... we, um..."

"We saw it materialise out of nowhere," John put in.

"Yes, aside from that, it's not the same handwriting as the one under the stairs."

"But that can't happen, Sherlock," John protested. "Some sort of trick... a chemical of some kind..."

"Without a perpetrator, a motive, or a theory." Sherlock examined the wallpaper on the far wall for any further evidence of writing. "I'm going into Sudbury as soon as businesses are open to buy some proper lighting for this place. We can't work in the dark every night."

"Get some rat poison, while you're at it," John muttered. The scuttling of innumerable rats in the walls had died down with the sunlight, but he still saw ominous black shapes retreating to the corners of every room he encountered. _Just my imagination,_ he told himself. But it didn't make it any more pleasant.

"Either of you got something to write with?" Lestrade suddenly asked. John, who always kept a pencil on hand while on a case, fumbled for his pocket and handed one over. Lestrade carefully etched out on the wall, just underneath the demand:

_What do you want? – GL_

GL. John tilted his head slightly as he read Greg's characteristic scrawl. It had triggered some connection in his brain, but he couldn't explain just why he'd found that a little strange. Not in itself – Greg usually initialed work documents rather than writing his whole signature out – there was something else about it. Something important.

And he was too tired and pissed off about the gun to even begin to worry about that right now.

"Tell you what." Lestrade handed the pencil back. "If you want to go into Sudbury on a shopping trip, Sherlock, we should all go; get out of this place and get something to eat. Give the ghost time to respond."

"For God's sake," John said as he followed Sherlock and Lestrade down the stairs. "This is serious, Greg. You haven't even considered the obvious?"

"What?"

"There's no such thing as ghosts, and we're the only people who've been here all night... us and Harry Price. Except we're obviously not. Someone else is in the house. Or they were last night, dressing up as a ghost, writing creepy stuff on the walls and throwing Sherlock around." He glanced over at Sherlock. He had avoided the cortisone injection for the time being, but walked much more stiffly than he had the night before.

Both the writing and the commotion they'd heard upstairs could easily have been done by an intruder, ignoring the fact that Sherlock and John had watched the demand for mass form out of nothing. Even the nun, while she'd looked impressive, was obviously some kind of trick.

But how, John wondered, had someone managed to enter a room where Sherlock and Harry Price were both standing at the window, throw Sherlock onto the floor, and leave again, _without either man ever seeing them?_ It presented only one option that Sherlock himself would have approved of.

Sherlock was lying.

He'd seen who had pulled him down.

_Harry Price is the only person in the house who could have done it. Greg was with me. And he wouldn't have pulled a stupid prank like that, anyway._

_But if it was Harry, why won't Sherlock just tell us it was? He's been desperate to prove him a fraud._

_If it wasn't Harry, why didn't Sherlock see another person? If he did, why is he lying about it?_

Fumbling for the Beretta tucked into his belt, John opened the car boot and put it back where he'd found it, giving Sherlock a significant look, as if daring him to take it out again. Sherlock said nothing as he slid into the front passenger seat of the car, but he might be said to have slammed the door after him.

* * *

"Lights, mass, prayers," Lestrade muttered into his cup of coffee half an hour later. They were sitting in a brightly-painted coffee house in Gainsborough Street, Sudbury. He and John were in the process of demolishing bacon sandwiches and washing them down with cappuccinos; Sherlock was on his second double-espresso and nibbling listlessly on a piece of buttered toast.

"It was _Lestrade help lights mass prayers_ ," he corrected him. "If we're going to find out how the writing got there and why, we at least need to remember what it actually said."

"Okay, _Lestrade help lights mass prayers,"_ Lestrade said. "So what's that supposed to mean, exactly?"

"It sounds like the writer wants you to hold a requiem mass," John said.

"A what?"

"Catholic thing. Sort of a memorial service. Praying for souls in purgatory, and all that." John gulped down a mouthful of coffee. "Really, really boring. Unless you're the poor sod stuck in purgatory until someone else prays you out again."

"Well, they're barking up the wrong tree asking me for a requiem mass. I'm not even Catholic. Why me?"

"Why you, indeed?" Sherlock cupped his hands around his nose and mouth, deep in thought. "That's a very good question. Why you? The sugar was clearly aimed at you."

"You were the one who got thrown on the floor," John pointed out to him.

"And you, so far, have not been a target at all, John."

John looked between them. "Oh, for God's sake," he blurted out. "You're not suggesting I'm _behind_ this, are you? I was right there when we saw the nun. And I was on the lawn when you got thrown on the floor in the bedroom. And I was in the doorway with everyone else when we heard whatever it was upstairs..."

"And you were standing behind Lestrade when the sugar hit him in the face," Sherlock ended for him. "So no, you couldn't have thrown it, and I'm not suggesting you did. But I think the pattern of targeting is significant. Definitely significant."

Lestrade seemed about to respond when his phone blooped out a text alert. Muttering an apology, he fished it out of his jacket pocket. Melissa, which wasn't a surprise.

~~oo~~

_OH YOU BASTARD_

_\- Today 8:39am_

He blinked. Jesus Christ, what had he done this time?

 _What?_ he thumbed out.

~~oo~~

_I just found the nutella in the wardrobe and I don't know whether to laugh or kill you_

_\- Today 8:41am_

~~oo~~

Lestrade took a second to remember what Melissa was even referring to. Yes, he _had_ hidden a large jar of Nutella at the back of Melissa's side of the wardrobe, as a matter of fact.

 _Did that at Christmas_. _Told you you've got too many clothes!_

_\- Today 8:41am_

~~oo~~

_I do not. Hayley wants to know where hers is?_

_\- Today 8:42am_

~~oo~~

_Tell her to check her own wardrobe._

_\- Today 8:43am_

~~oo~~

"Sorry," he said, putting his phone back in his jacket pocket. "Home front. Just proving a point to the girls."

"Interesting word choice," Sherlock said innocently.

"Shut it, Sherlock. Unless you're going to say something helpful about what happened last night."

"I don't know what happened last night." Sherlock's response was muffled by his cup. "Not entirely. Give me time to collaborate the data and work out which we can eliminate or explain away, that which we can replicate, and that which remains."

* * *

 _I definitely can't bring Charlie here,_ Molly thought to herself as she got out of the car and looked apprehensively at the narrow, battered house in front of her. One more stop before she could go home, the most difficult stop of all: the Sadler residence in Shepherd's Bush. When the door opened to reveal not Jess Sadler, but a dishevelled, greying woman in her forties, her courage nearly failed her.

"Uh, hello," she stammered. "Is Jess in?"

"Who're you?" the woman asked her warily.

Molly glanced over the woman's shoulder to the hall staircase as Jess descended the staircase and came into view. She looked a lot more wretched than she had at the hospital; her fluffy blonde hair hung down slightly on her neck, as if she hadn't washed it in several days.

Molly, and not for the first time, thought of Sherlock. Through all the years of knowing Sherlock, even when he'd been so awful to her so many times, Molly had believed in him. Not just because she'd once been desperately in love with him, but because he was a good person. He just wasn't a _nice_ person, exactly. He helped people, every day, and he never expected a penny for his work. If that didn't make him a good man, Molly had no idea what did. Surely Sherlock would be able to help –

"It's okay, Mum," Jess said wearily. "This is Molly. She's from the hospital. Is – is there something wrong?" It had apparently just dawned on her that it wasn't a good sign to have a pathologist knocking on her door just before nine in the morning.

"Um." Molly clutched her purse with white knuckles. "I just wanted to talk to you a little more about... um. Is there somewhere we can go to...?"

Jess looked at her mother, who in turn looked distrustfully at Molly. _Of course she doesn't like me,_ Molly tried to tell herself. _She's Jess's mother. She wants to protect her._

"There's a café at the end of the street," Jess said. "I suppose we could..."

Molly shook her head. "I think you may want this to be a little private," she said.

"Okay." Glancing again at her mother, Jess led Molly back up the stairs to a chaotic, slope-roofed bedroom. _A teenager's room,_ Molly thought to herself. There were posters of bands she didn't recognise on the walls, and the floor was littered with discarded clothes. Jess kicked at them to forge a path over to the unmade bed. "Sorry," she muttered, leaning over to open a window and let some air into the stuffy room. "Wasn't expecting anyone but Mum to come in here, really."

Molly sat down gingerly on the mattress, still looking around. In one corner, the mess was strangely cleared, and there were compressions in the carpet to form a roughly rectangular shape. A cradle had once sat there. She steeled herself.

"Is this about Evie?" Jess asked. Molly nodded.

"Yes," she faltered. "I need to tell you something. When I sent that form out asking if we could retain Evie's heart for research, well... my boss, the one who did the..." She stopped and let that word remain unspoken. "He'd already taken her heart, and said we'd just lost the paperwork and I should get your permission after the fact."

Jess looked at her like a woman who'd been abruptly woken up. "What?" she demanded. "No, I... I mean, I was out of my mind after it happened. But I'd have remembered if I'd signed something letting them take her heart!"

Molly nodded. "I believe you," she said. "But see, it had already been done before I sent you the form, so when you declined, I..."

"Oh, God." Jess sank down on the mattress. "You mean, when the hospital released her, they didn't release... all of her? Oh, God!"

Molly opened her mouth to say something comforting; realising she didn't have anything to say that would help, she shut it again.

"Why did you lie to me?" Jess rasped. "Why – oh, who cares why you lied to me. You're not the one who did it. Who's your boss? I want him bloody strung up for this!"

"So do I." Molly had just realised she was twisting her wedding ring again. She splayed her hands over her knees instead. "And I'm going to take this case up with the authorities. Just as soon as I can talk to my husband about it – he's away for a couple of days. You said the funeral is on Tuesday?"

Jess swiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and nodded.

"Okay. The report actually says which organs were removed, so fortunately, you don't have to..." Molly stopped and swallowed, suddenly wishing someone else was with her. Someone who had tact, like John or Mel. "I mean," she said, "I can't give her heart back to you, is what I mean. I'm so sorry. I wish I could. If you want to go ahead with the funeral, it won't hurt the case I'm going to bring up."

Jess nodded, and Molly took that as an assent that the funeral would go ahead as planned.

At least the poor girl could bury her child now.

Most of her.

Molly quickly left Jess and her family with the news. Hopefully her mother could comfort her in some way that she couldn't. Once back in the car, though, she felt a sudden wave of cold nausea sweep over her. There were things in motion she couldn't stop now, and she hadn't even talked to John about them yet.


	10. No Sale

At a quarter past ten, after a quick search around Sudbury for lighting and a second generator, they returned to the rectory. As Lestrade pulled the car over next to the culvert, Harry Price emerged from the arch that went through to the front rectory gatehouse. He carried what looked to be a camera equipment bag over one shoulder.

"Oh, for God's sake," Sherlock growled through his teeth.

"Play nicely," Lestrade said.

"Oh, why, exactly?"

"Because you sometimes need to speak softly and carry a big stick when it comes to con artists, Sherlock, you know that – Harry, hi." His tone abruptly became faux-cheerful as he pulled the ignition key and opened the car door, pocketing the car keys with one hand and giving the other for Price to shake. "We were about to call you to come back in. What's all this?"

"I told you, gentlemen," Price said, hoisting the heavy bag over his shoulder. "Ghost hunting may not be a science you respect, but it's still a science, and requires the right equipment. EMF meter, EVP recorder, full spectrum camera... non-contact thermometer..."

"And that." John pointed to the medal Price wore on a chain around his neck, slung ostentatiously outside of his clothes. "That's a St. Benedict's medal, isn't it?"

Price splayed his fingers toward it vaguely. "Yes."

"And what exactly is a St. Benedict's medal?" Lestrade asked long-sufferingly.

"Wards off witchcraft and evil spirits, apparently, so I'd hardly classify it under "scientific equipment," John said. "'Let not the dragon be my guide.' Mum had one hanging off the rear vision mirror of the car." He smiled for a second. "I'd almost forgotten about that. I wonder what happened to it? Not something Harry would be keen to hang onto – oh," he said, seeing Price's expression. "Harry's my sister. Interesting that you didn't bring this stuff around last night when –"

Sherlock silenced him with a glance. "Well," he said. "Since you're so desperate to show us what all these wonderful little machines do, you may as well. I need to charge my phone again."

* * *

"Right," Price said, rifling through his bag. They were standing in the rectory kitchen, a bright, airy room that was dusty through lack of use, but the only room in the rectory that had a cheerful air in broad sunshine. "Still camera with infrared capability... digital sound recorder... I trust I don't need to explain all that to you. This is an EMF meter." He produced a flat black rectangle only a little bigger than his wallet and plunked it onto the table. "Now, this one goes down all the way to 20Hz, so it's pretty sensitive."

"What's it do?" asked Lestrade.

"Measures changes in the electro-magnetic field around us," Price explained. "Those sort of fluctuations are often associated with paranormal activity. Geiger counter, ion meter... working on the same principles, of course. Negative ions and larger than usual levels of radioactivity can also be associated with a haunting."

Sherlock was kneeling on the floor in one corner intent on his phone, which was plugged into the life support of the generator. "I think there's one thing you've not brought with you," he said over his shoulder.

Price turned to him in a way that was starting to become forbearing. "And what's that, Mr. Holmes?" he asked.

"An infrasound monitor."

Price chuckled. "Those tend to be bulky."

"They were, back in approximately the late Bronze Age, but I've brought one along that's a little more compact," Sherlock said. "It's still in the car. Now I've done my preliminary observation of the rectory at night, I think it's best we use it alongside your equipment, don't you?"

"Sherlock," John said, "if I admit that I haven't read your sodding paper on infrasound, will you please tell me what it is and what it's got to do with all this?"

Sherlock sighed and finally stood up to join the conversation, though as usual, he "joined" the conversation with all the subtlety of a lorry smashing through a boundary fence. "You understand the principles of infrasound, I hope," he said.

"I think so," John said carefully. His scientific strength was in organic chemistry, not physics. "It's sound on a frequency too low for people to hear."

"Or for people to realise they're hearing," Sherlock said. "Below 20Hz, generally. Two months ago, a client contacted me with a case."

"Jesus, Sherlock, you took a case without telling me? You were still in a bloody _sling_ two months ago – "

"Oh, will you please relax? The client was Mrs. Hudson, and I solved it without even leaving the building."

John stopped and considered how annoyed he wanted to be about this, under the circumstances. "Well," he finally said, "I hope you didn't take money off her hands for it."

"She'd been cooking in her kitchen one night, and had rested a knife handle-down on the corral beside her sink after washing it." Sherlock ignored his remark. "She told me that the knife blade started to vibrate, despite the fact that nobody was touching it. At first, I supposed she was being hysterical and it was either her imagination or the vibrations from nearby traffic."

John was gaining an understanding of what had prompted Sherlock into writing that research paper to begin with – to reassure Mrs. Hudson that what had frightened her so much had been misunderstood science. "But it wasn't traffic, surely," he said.

"Of course it wasn't. Otherwise she'd have experienced that phenomenon before and one of us would have seen it. So I sent her to see you and Molly, and investigated for myself the following night. I was alone at the sink when I saw what I can only describe to you as a strange grey blur out of the corner of my eye, near the front door. When I looked directly at it, it was gone. While this was going on, the knife blades I'd set up in the sink corral really did move on their own."

And all _this_ explained why he'd never said anything about the case before now. He'd had so many issues after the kidnapping that the last thing in the world he'd do is tell his best friend and doctor that he'd been hallucinating.

"Would you care to know what was causing it?" Sherlock continued.

"Just hurry up and get on with it," Lestrade groaned. "I deal with enough meandering testimonies at work, thanks."

"It was the _extractor fan_ on her oven, which had been replaced the morning before. It was emitting infrasound on a frequency of just over 19Hz, which is very close to the resonant eye frequency given by NASA, which is 18Hz."

"So that grey blur you saw," John said. "It was an hallucination caused by the vibrations of your own eye?"

"Exactly. I measured the kitchen and discovered it was exactly half a wavelength in length. The sink is in the centre of it, creating a standing wave that caused the knives to shake. The fan was replaced with a slightly louder one, and there were no more incidents. End of story."

John wondered for a second. "So you think there might be infrasound in the rectory. Caused by what? There's no electricity here, let alone extractor fans." He thought back to the nun of the evening before. She'd looked so... lifelike. Not on the same level as a grey blur.

"There's electricity everywhere, John; it occurs in nature. I think the most likely explanation here is lightning and other atmospheric weather. Those were certainly factors in the other cases I examined. I'm collecting all the weather reports available for all the ghost sightings that – "

"Oh, hello!"

They turned. Marianne Foyster was standing behind the kitchen screen door, her young daughter on her hip. Lestrade crossed the kitchen and opened the door for her and she stepped inside.

"Lionel sent me over to check if you needed anything," she said cheerfully. "See any ghosts last night?"

"No, of course not," said Sherlock, before either Lestrade or John could give things away. "Marianne, does Lionel have any more solid information on the nun? I've only got my mobile phone as a research tool right now, but nothing I've had access to indicates that there ever _was_ a nun. Or a nunnery, for that matter."

"Mummy," Ashleigh Foyster broke in, "what's a nun?"

"The pretty lady, sweetheart." She hoisted her daughter a little awkwardly while Ashleigh clamped her chubby legs around her waist. Then, seeing Sherlock's expression, she said, "oh, didn't Lionel tell you we used to see her every now and again? Ashleigh, too. She's harmless, and never really scared anyone – like those monks you were talking about last night, Inspector Lestrade."

"Marianne," Sherlock said in his most charming tones, "would you be all right with my interviewing Ashleigh about what exactly she's seen?"

She looked confused. "I can't see why not," she said.

 _Obviously hasn't heard about the Claudette Bruhl business,_ John thought, tensing up at the memory.

"Why don't you just interview me and Lionel?" Marianne went on.

"Because, forgive me for this, your daughter is much less likely to lie to me."

"Yeah, but you're far less likely to make her parents cry," John muttered, almost too low to be heard. "How about we both do that, Sherlock?" he suggested more loudly. "I'll shut up if you want to do all the talking."

Sherlock huffed. "Fine."

Marianne lowered her small daughter onto her feet. "Ash," she said pleasantly. "Do you want to go up to the drawing room with Sherlock and John?"

"Crayons?" Ashleigh asked her. Marianne looked apologetically at Sherlock.

"You don't mind if she gets the crayons out, do you?" she asked. "She's a good multi-tasker, and might talk more if she's scribbling away."

* * *

When Marianne had said "drawing room", she had literally meant the room where Ashleigh concentrated on her drawings. On their first tour around the rectory, Sherlock had noted that one of the rooms upstairs was almost as big again as the master bedroom, and deduced it had been the schoolroom of the Bull children. Marianne went back to the manor and returned with an A3 artist's sketchbook and a case of crayons; Ashleigh sat on the floor in the middle of the room and began scribbling. She was a chubby, cherubic looking child with effervescent blonde curls and blue eyes like her father's. She was also, it seemed, capable of great levels of concentration and wasn't yet bound by social niceties.

This last was what made her an ideal interviewee over her parents. Sherlock knew that people usually lied if and when they had a reason to gain from it. Ashleigh didn't see any reasons yet.

After a brief, failed attempt to register a greeting from the little girl, John stood at parade rest just inside the room. He looked over at Sherlock, who was still hesitating in the doorway. The look on his face spelled out: _And you wanted to do this on your own?_

Sherlock cleared his throat and went over to the little girl. There were no chairs, beds or sofas in the room, so he dropped down onto the floorboards beside her. Having no idea what to do with his long legs he crossed them, palms covering the toes of his shoes boyishly.

"Ashleigh," he said hesitantly. "Hi."

She looked up at him in frank unconcern. "Hi," she said, then shoved her drawing at him. "I drawed you a picture."

Sherlock felt uncomfortably that he was not only expected to ignore her horrid grammar, he was also expected to praise her picture. This mainly consisted of indiscriminate pink, yellow and black crayon blobs. He held it up against the light and looked at it carefully, trying to puzzle out what it depicted. "Well," he finally said, clearing his throat. "This is very... interesting."

At the last second he had an epiphany. Of course, Ashleigh Foyster was a _client_. A client who was three years old, but a client nonetheless. And you always let clients talk during an interview; while guiding the conversation, of course. _Tell me what the trouble is._

"Tell me about your picture," he said.

_Is this the ghost? No, shut up._ _Don't lead her on._

"It's a pig," she said, clearly a little offended that he'd not pointed that out himself.

"Oh yes, I see." Sherlock turned the picture clockwise. "The pink should have been a dead giveaway, and of course the sun is yellow and the pig-pen fence is black. Excellent work, Ashleigh. Thank you."

"You're welcome!" she piped. Then she pointed at John. "You come here," she said. "I draw you a picture, too."

Sherlock suspected that if Charlotte Watson ever pointed at her father and demanded "you come here", she would receive quite the correction for it. But John wasn't responsible for Ashleigh's morals or manners, so he shrugged and came over, dropping down on the floor beside Sherlock. Ashleigh seemed to be drawing a huge pink and purple daisy, and Sherlock found himself almost miffed at the dissonance between a pig and a flower.

He was searching the recesses of his mind for everything he'd ever learned about very young children and how to interact with them.

There wasn't much in there.

"That's John," he finally said. Marianne had mentioned their names in front of Ashleigh, but she hadn't exactly introduced them properly. "I'm Sherlock."

He thought perhaps he should have given Ashleigh a shortened or simplified version of his name, but it was the honest truth that he'd never had one. He half expected her to comment that his name was "funny" or express confusion about it, but she continued drawing as if this were the most ordinary thing in the world. _Of course,_ he thought. _To a three-year-old, is 'Sherlock' any more strange than 'Lionel'?_

Having no idea what to say next, he looked helplessly at John.

"Ashleigh," John said, trying to meet her gaze and failing as she bent over her picture. "Your mum told me you'd seen a pretty lady here."

"Nun."

"Yes. A pretty nun."

"She was nice. I liked her." Ashleigh shoved her daisy picture at John and waited while he looked at it. John cleared his throat.

"That's great, Ashleigh," he said, as enthusiastically as his honest nature could manage. "Fantastic. Thank you."

John folded the crayon drawing and slipped it awkwardly into his jeans pocket, and Sherlock, glancing over his own drawing, had a sudden thought. The kid liked drawing – and she was good at it, for her age. She worked quickly and observed well.

"Ashleigh," he said, and this time the little girl turned and looked at him. "Do you think you could draw me a picture of the nun? Please?"

* * *

"Got something to show you, actually, Inspector Lestrade," Price said over one shoulder. He was still rummaging around in his bag of equipment.

"Oh?" Lestrade raised one eyebrow. "And what might that be?"

But Price pulled out not another piece of gadgetry, but a glossy ten by twelve black and white photograph of the rectory itself. "Took that when I was here last February," he said, triumphantly putting it in Lestrade's hands. "Now, what do you think of that, then?"

Lestrade squinted at it for a few moments, reluctantly admitting to himself that Mel was right – his eyesight was starting to "go" a little. "Oh, you mean that," he finally said, pointing to a small pale blob against the dark rectangle of the wall behind it. "Brick, is it?"

"Looks that way," Price said. "A brick, in mid-air. I didn't see it until after I'd uploaded the photograph, and I was on my own at the time. You said you once had experience of ghost monks examining builder's tools – "

"Yeah, but they weren't throwing bricks around." Lestrade looked carefully at the photograph. "Okay," he said at length. "One big problem I can see here."

Price looked surprised. "What?"

"Have you got anyone who can verify that you were on your own that day, with nobody else around?"

"Well..."

"Price, come on." Lestrade handed the picture back. "I'm a senior detective for the Yard, you can't just tell me 'oh, I was on my own' and have me swallow that one with no proof."

"Sometimes a person's whereabouts can't be proved."

"Yeah, you're right. But don't ask me to believe this brick was chucked by a ghost based _only_ on your say-so that nobody else was there. How many criminals do you think I'd catch if I just believed everyone's stories without checking them?" Lestrade pointed at the photograph. "This wall here," he said. "It's around the back, near where the water pumps are." This had once, Lionel had said, serviced a laundry for the Bull family. "I noticed when we gave the rectory a once-over that it'd been repaired and re-mortared recently. Wouldn't have happened last February or so, would it?"

Price was starting to look sullen. "I don't know anything about recent repairs done to the rectory," he said.

"No? I bet the Foysters do. I'll ask them when I get a chance. Anyway, I did once know a builder who had a habit of chucking masonry around as he was clearing it. Dad. And he'd definitely have done it if some bloke paid him for a photograph opportunity." He gave the photograph back to Price. "Sorry," he said. "No sale."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Sherlock's story about the infrasound in Mrs. Hudson's kitchen is based on the real experiences of the late Vic Tandy, an IT professor at Coventry University.
> 
> * The "brick photograph" really exists and can be easily found by Googling "Borley Rectory brick photograph." It was taken while the Rectory was being demolished.


	11. A Study in Diplomacy

"I won't lie," John said quietly to Sherlock as they stood in the doorway, pondering Ashleigh Foyster's drawing. "I'm feeling just a tiny bit freaked out about this."

Sherlock glanced back at Ashleigh, who was still drawing away and not at all concerned with the fuss her artwork was causing. "Her colour scheme," he said. "It was probably indiscriminate. She's a young child."

"Who knows the sun is yellow and pigs are pink," John pointed out. "And who's just drawn a woman who looks _nothing_ like the one Greg and I saw at the window last night. Her face..."

The "pretty lady's" face consisted of two huge, hollow eyes and a slit mouth that extended from one edge of her oval face to the other. These were in red. The rest of her face was coloured in black so heavily that Ashleigh had nearly broken through the paper with her crayon.

"And," John went on, "since when do nuns wear bright red dresses, anyway?"

"And a crinoline," Sherlock mused.

"A what?"

Sherlock pointed to the wide skirt. "Not exactly church standard, I'll agree," he said. "And very much in the style of the 1860s. The rectory was built in 1862, you remember."

"What, so there's at least two of these ghosts wandering around now?"

"And writing on the walls, it seems." Sherlock went out onto the landing and called Lestrade's name down the stairs. They heard footsteps in the passage below, and then Marianne murmuring "no, your left, Inspector," before he appeared at the foot of the stairs and started to climb. Marianne and Price followed close behind him.

"What's going on?" he asked as he reached the landing.

"Is this what you and John saw on the lawn last night?" Sherlock ignored the look on Price's face and shoved Ashleigh's drawing into Lestrade's hands.

"No." Lestrade turned the paper slightly, then handed it to Marianne, who peered at it.

"Oh, God," she blurted out, a little blasphemously. "No. No, this isn't the nun. This isn't what Lionel and I have seen. And she definitely said...? Ashleigh, sweetheart," she interrupted herself, going to the drawing room doorway. Ashleigh had been scribbling away through all of this, but now raised her head.

"Mummy?"

"Is this the pretty lady you've seen?" Marianne asked her, holding the drawing out. "The one you drew for Sherlock. You've seen her here?"

Ashleigh nodded, unconcerned.

"Where, darling?"

"In my room. Everywhere. She's a nice lady."

"Well, we can at least thank God sincerely for that," Marianne said under her breath, rejoining the group in the hall and handing the picture back to Sherlock. "I don't know what to tell you. This is definitely not the nun."

"Mr. Holmes," Price said, "if there's something else I don't know about, perhaps you could fill me in?"

"Oh, fine." Sherlock led the way down the hall to the bedroom where John and Lestrade had slept the night before. Even in broad daylight, it looked gloomy, since the window was small and access to the sky was blocked out by a large oak tree growing just outside. Its leaves were shivering in the spring breeze and casting trembling shadows on the walls. From the doorway, they could all see that the now-fading communication to Lestrade, and his bolder, darker enquiry, had now been joined by a new comment.

"Well, there's your answer," Sherlock said, gesturing a little dramatically to it.

"Rest," Lestrade read aloud.

"Rest?" Sherlock raised one eyebrow. "It says _pest."_

"Why would a ghost want _pest?_ That doesn't even make sense."

"And you're not reading the writing. You're reading _into_ the writing. Pest may be short for _pestilence._ The writer might be indicating that they see people as pests, or want pestilence to be visited upon the household. or any number of other things. John, what do you think?"

"Sorry." John folded his arms, peering at the scrawled word. It was fainter than the original words had been, but seemed to be in the same handwriting. "I think it says _rest,_ too. Though with that handwriting... I'm starting to think the rectory is being haunted by the ghost of a doctor."

Sherlock shot John an exasperated look and then turned to Price, as if begging him to step up.

"Pest," Price said promptly.

"Marianne?" Sherlock turned and gestured for her to come forward so that she could see it. "Come on, you have eyes, too... for what that's worth."

She contemplated the single word in silence for a few seconds. "I think it says 'rest'," she said at last, but didn't sound particularly confident about it.

"Never in the world would I have thought you and I would agree on this," Price said in amusement. "Two votes for 'pest'. Three for 'rest.' I suggest we ask the spirit for further elaboration, and not by writing on the wall this time."

* * *

"Oh, what utter nonsense!" Eric Smith roared, slapping his knee and laughing until his face was red.

"Eric," Marianne scolded mildly, once she could make herself heard over the old man's guffawing. They'd just returned to Borley Manor to confer with Lionel on Price's idea: a séance to be held late that night in the rectory cellar.

"No really, you've no idea..." Eric was wiping his streaming eyes. "Oh, good grief. It was all a bit of good _fun_ to begin with, but now you're all taking this too far. Ghosts? My right foot! I spent most of my childhood here, remember? The only spooky things that ever happened were things my brothers and I were doing ourselves."

"Oh?" Sherlock said, sounding affronted.

"Oh, the looks on all your _faces_..." Eric started to get out of his chair; seeing the elderly man was having some difficulty with it, both Marianne and John reached over to help steady him.

"Old bones," he said regretfully, still chortling as he finally straightened up. "I certainly hope I won't be resurrected with this rusty old suit of armour on the last day. Come on. I've got a few things to show you – and some confessions to make, after sixty years!"

"Don't let him excite himself too much, will you?" Mabel Smith whispered audibly to Marianne as Eric led the charge out the front door of the manor. "I'll have a cup of tea for him when he gets back. Poor man will probably need one."

* * *

"So you're okay with all this, then?"

Lestrade, lingering behind, had managed to catch Lionel Foyster on his own in the rose garden behind Borley Manor. The day was bright and sunny, and the rector wore an awkwardly large straw hat to cover the shiny bald patch on his head.

"With what?" he asked, smiling.

"Price's big idea for a séance. You're not bothered by us doing it in the rectory?"

Lionel shrugged. "Oh, no. I expected when I told Price he could pay us a visit that something of that kind was bound to enter his head. Why should it bother me?"

Lestrade, who had exactly zero religious convictions whatsoever, shrugged. "Dunno," he said. "Some men of the cloth might consider that kind of thing to be the second cousin of devil worship."

Lionel chuckled. "Harmless," he said. "Not every clergyman is looking for demons under the coffee table, Inspector Lestrade. I've seen evil before, and I can tell you – never from a spirit or a demon. Just from people. Nasty, miserable people. If there even are demons, I doubt they can hurt us much. I try not to mention that sort of thing too much in the pulpit, anyhow."

"But you said Marianne was psychic?"

"She is," he said staunchly. "But being psychic has little to do with ghosts and devils. If you believe a person can be psychic, you can believe a person can also accidentally set off forces they don't understand and can't control, and that's what I think is happening with Marianne."

Lestrade paused, glancing over the roses around them that were nodding in the midday sun. He was thinking about what Sherlock had said about infrasound. Most of that conversation had sailed right over his non-scientific head, but the idea had interested him – _all because you can't hear it doesn't mean it isn't making a sound._ As it were. Perhaps this whole thing revolved around an idea like that.

"Anyway," Lionel was saying casually, hands in pockets. "Ghosts aren't devils."

"The nun..."

"Oh, you've seen her too? Yes, she wandered about a little while we were living over there. Or so Marianne says."

"You never saw her? Marianne was talking like you did."

"I may have played along a couple of times," Lionel admitted impishly. "It was all harmless, since Marianne isn't frightened by her. I just felt a bit left out of things, to be honest, when she started up about what she could see and feel. Marianne can still be a bit of a mystery to me."

"She's a lot younger than you, isn't she?"

Seeing Lionel's expression, Lestrade swiftly backtracked.

"God, no," he said. "I mean, I didn't mean it to sound like that. My girlfriend... she's a lot younger, and we're having a few, um... look, well I was just wondering how you and Marianne manage with the age difference thing, that's all."

Lionel Foyster looked thoughtful for a few moments. "I hardly ever think about it, really," he said at last, reaching over to tweak at the dusky red blooms of the nearest rose bush. "I was surprised when you pointed it out just now. Marianne is just... _Marianne_ , not Marianne-who-is-twenty-one-years-younger-than-me. I had the parish at Hinderclay when I met her ten years ago, and I had no idea in the world she was only twenty-two then."

"Her family didn't kick up a fuss?" Lestrade had always considered himself lucky in this respect. Melissa was an only child, and her mother lived in Cambridge. They had nice, chatty, mother-daughter phone conversations and visits a few times a year, but Liz Brennan was not the controlling type and had never, so far as he knew, objected to the relationship.

"She doesn't really have any family. None to speak of, but for a few distant cousins." Lionel shrugged. "Anyway, we just sort of... understood each other from the beginning. On a mental level, you know. A spiritual level."

Lestrade did know. He knew he was regarded by some as a cradle-robber who was interested in Melissa's legs and not her brain, but had learned to brush that off.

"Well, we got married only six months later, so whoever didn't already have a bee in their bonnet about us did after _that."_

"Was that why you went out to Canada?"

Lionel smiled wryly. "Partly, yes," he admitted. "We spent five years out there, but Marianne didn't want to raise a family there, so we came back just before we had Ashleigh."

"So she's not... restless...?"

"If you mean, is she cheating on me, I don't think so," Lionel said good-naturedly. "I suppose it's a bit quiet for her out here, but we get around that. She has friends in London that she visits a lot. The way I see it, Inspector Lestrade – "

"Greg."

"Greg. The way I see it is, it's a free country. We're not living in the Victorian era where she's stuck with me and I'm stuck with her to avoid a scandal. If she didn't want to be married to me, she wouldn't be."

"The church wouldn't be thrilled about that, I bet."

"The church also wouldn't be thrilled to find out we're having a séance tonight in our cellar." Lionel smiled again. "Besides, if Marianne wanted to leave or divorce me, I doubt she'd mind what the church thought about it. We're happy together, you know. So I think if you're after some advice on your partner, it would be to just let things happen as they happen. I've seen many a relationship ruined by one person trying to force things along on principles that don't seem to apply."

* * *

"Here was my secret weapon, as it were. I'm actually surprised to find it still here..."

Eric Smith had led the party not over to the rectory itself, but to a spot in the long grass on the manor side of the quiet road. He pointed to a small culvert.

"Too small for human use," Sherlock commented.

"Not when you're a seven-year-old human, it isn't," Eric said. "Used it many times, I can promise you."

"Where does it lead?"

"Would you believe, right into the rectory kitchen cellar? It's a stormwater drain, I think. The rectory cellars are prone to flooding at the best of times. A skinny adult could probably crawl along it, commando-style, as it were, but I shouldn't try if I were any of you. If it's caved in somewhere in the middle, we'll have to gas you out of it, like a rabbit."

"So how does this all fit in with things?" John asked.

"Well, of course, all those stories that end _and there was nobody else in the house at the time_ are bunk." Eric folded his arms, grinning. "Quite easy for Roy and Don and me – my brothers – quite easy for us to slip in and out, and nobody ever saw us do it. I have a feeling Aunt Alice knew about it. She might even have found it first. She was a funny thing, probably just as bored as we were. But we were only having fun. I didn't really expect any grown-ups were going to take those pranks seriously. Did you know about this, Lionel? I was married and living in Hadleigh by the time you were here as a kid."

Lionel and Lestrade had just rejoined the group, and Lionel, despite his stiff, rheumatic back, had bent slightly to look at the culvert entrance.

"No," he said cheerfully. "Though I'm a bit disappointed I'm only finding it now. No, in my day, we played our pranks the hard way, I'm afraid."

"The hard way?" Price, who had been listening to Eric Smith in increasingly uncomfortable silence and ignoring the occasional triumphant glance from Sherlock, was now starting to look a little green.

"Come on." Lionel gestured with one hand. "Let's go over, and I'll show you."

* * *

"Behold," Lionel said. They were standing in the kitchen hall, and he had just pointed out something Sherlock had seen but largely dismissed – a small hatch that provided ventilation to the servant's quarters below.

"I don't suppose anyone's got anything on them to prove it," Lionel said. "But if you put a long wire through this vent, you can very easily pull the rope of the servant's bells and set them off on cue. Did it many times. There's a few other vents around the place that were just as much fun to play with. There's one in the hall that used to go straight through to the drawing room. I expect it's why there are such odd acoustics in the rectory. Marianne and I couldn't have a private conversation here – you never know who can hear it. It's great fun for kids who like to make all sorts of silly noises. Of course, there were two or three actual servants here in those days, and that made things more fun; sometimes I'd keep them up and down the stairs all night. Kids can be awful like that."

"And the coin?" Sherlock asked him. "The one that hit Marianne in the face? And what about the sugar that hit Lestrade?"

"I never said _all_ of it was fake," Lionel protested, but he still looked amused. "I wouldn't have brought you all out here if I could have explained everything to Marianne. I'm afraid those are still mysteries - and not the only ones."

"Maybe," Eric said, a twinkle in his eye, "maybe my being decrepit and stiff is just a clever ruse, and I've been climbing through into the cellar again..."

"In a red dress?" Marianne suddenly asked him.

"I'm sorry?"

"Never mind."

He took her arm and started to escort her through the hall. "Come on," he said, as boisterous as a schoolboy. "I'll show you the best spots to make spooky noises that can be heard all over the rectory, and the spot where I used to clank the water pump to give my stuffy old uncle a good fright..."

* * *

Eric Smith led the way back out to the front of the rectory; they were following the drive along the side of the house toward what had once been tennis courts when Lestrade, who was keeping pace with a watchful Sherlock four steps behind everyone else, suddenly stopped.

"Hang on," he said. "Isn't that your car, John?"

John also stopped; he was about to respond when the blue sedan pulled to a halt on the road in front of the rectory. By this time Eric had turned and was looking at them.

"My wife," John explained distractedly, noting that it was his daughter as well. "We'll, um. We'll catch you up, okay?"

Eric nodded and continued talking loudly about the acoustics of the house, leading Price, Lionel and Marianne around the side of the rectory. John crossed the road, reaching the car just as Molly got out of it. With a glance at Sherlock, Lestrade followed a few paces behind.

"What are you doing here?" John asked gently as Molly made her way around the car to him. He opened the rear door; Charlie, confined to her car seat, was whimpering and had clearly had enough of her long car ride. "Why didn't you call?"

"I'm sorry..." Molly unexpectedly buried her face in his shoulder.

"Whoa, what...?" He stopped unclipping Charlie from her car seat to steady her.

"I'm sorry, I just really needed to talk to you in person and I didn't want you to have to come home, so I..."

John gave her a bewildered hug, then broke it and looked carefully at her, frowning. "Private talk?" he asked.

She nodded. John glanced over his shoulder at Lestrade, who cleared his throat and stepped up.

"Come on, kid," he said, going over to free Charlie's chubby arms and legs and lift her out of the car. "Your mum and dad need to talk. Let's go annoy your Uncle Sherlock."

Neither John nor Molly seemed to register this. Lestrade watched John lead his wife down the path toward the rectory. Just before they reached the bend and disappeared behind the chestnut trees, he heard Sherlock's firm step close behind.

"Something's going on," he said, turning to him. "From the look on Molly's face, I'd say someone's died." His thoughts went out to Harry Watson. Charlie was now whimpering more than ever, grappling at his arm and reaching out for Sherlock. Lestrade gave in and handed her over.

"Oh, for God's sake," Sherlock muttered, shifting her in his arms. She blew a wet raspberry on his neck, then reached up and tugged on one of his dark curls. He winced and started to gently prise her hand open.

Lestrade grinned. "You're a natural," he teased.

"I'm really _not_ ," Sherlock said long-sufferingly. "I'm about as paternal as a... something that isn't very paternal."

* * *

"So you've spoken to Mycroft about this already?"

John had taken Molly into the bright rectory kitchen and sat down at the table, urging her to do the same. But she remained standing, lit by a flood of sunshine streaming through the diamond-paned window, as if she was on trial. "Yes," she said wretchedly. "I'm so sorry, I wasn't trying to keep things from you, I just – "

"No, that wasn't what I meant." He reached out and squeezed her chilly hands. "I just meant, he thinks he's going to be able to protect us from the worst of it?"

She nodded. "He said he'd help... but we really don't know what's going to happen. I'm sorry I didn't ask you beforehand."

He looked up at her. "What do you think I'd have said if you did?" he asked calmly.

She hedged.

"Serious question, Molly."

"I – I don't know..."

"I'm a bit disappointed by that, if I'm honest," he said, looking down at the hands he held and taking a breath. "For the record, I'd have asked how you'd feel if this was something that happened to Charlie."

"John!"

"Well?" He looked up at her earnestly.

She shut her eyes for a few seconds, weighing this one up in her head. Distantly, they could hear Eric Smith's bull-bellow voice explaining the capers of his youth to his more-or-less captive audience.

"Well," she said finally. "If it was Charlie, I'd want someone to stick up for her..."

He nodded. "And I would, too," he said simply. "And today, that person was you. And that's okay. That's more than okay." He stood up and kissed her forehead.

"Mycroft said I might get fired," she said into his shoulder.

"Then I'll go back to work."

"We might have to move."

"Then we'll move. We were going to move eventually, anyway."

She shook her head. How was he not understanding this? "No," she said, "I mean, we may have to leave London..."

John shrugged. "Sherlock says Australia's a nice place. I'd prefer it to... I dunno... Antarctica."

"Don't be silly," she struggled, smiling reluctantly through tears. "This... this could be big. Mycroft said it might be. If I get fired and then poor Sherlock can't work in the lab anymore, well, and you and Sherlock can't... I may have ruined everything..."

"Nope." John squeezed her hands again. "You haven't ruined anything, and I'm glad you came before I strangled Sherlock or Harry Price or both of them. I really don't think we're going to end up having to leave London. Mycroft wouldn't have it. If he can fake plane crashes and hack CCTV, he can help us." He paused. "Are you sorry you started this?"

She thought about this for a few seconds, then shook her head. "No."

"Then neither am I. Anyway, this is more important than running around a rectory in the middle of the night."

"But you're Sherlock's partner..."

"I'm also _your_ partner," he reminded her. "And I'm not married to Sherlock Holmes." He put one arm around her shoulders as they went to the door. "I mean, that said, though, he _is_ a detective. We should tell him what's going on... oh, shit."

The last thing John wanted was Sherlock throwing himself into the Sadler case.

This was going to be an interesting study in diplomacy.


	12. Litany

"I think it might be best if we went back tomorrow," John said, reaching out for the kitchen door with one hand. "If we put Charlie back in her car seat today she might never forgive us. Besides, you look all-in. We'll get you and Charlie set up in a hotel somewhere up the road."

She looked up at him in silent questioning.

"I mean, you don't want to stay here," he said wryly. "You really don't."

"Is the place really haunted then?" Molly smiled, tired but mischievous.

"Maybe," John said, determined to be open-minded. "Some weird things have been happening. But I was thinking more about the water problem, and the rats."

"Rats?"

"I don't think even Casper would take some of them on." Toby was too laidback to be any use as a ratter. On one occasion the previous spring, they'd seen him watch a lost field-mouse zip across the living room floor without even blinking about it. "Horrible things the size of dogs."

"Ugh!"

John was about to reply when sudden, piercing screams shattered the air.

"Ashleigh -"

John dashed for the stairs, taking them two at a time until he'd reached the drawing room door. It was shut; from very close behind it, Ashleigh was still screaming. He shook the door handle, finding it locked fast. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Molly had reached the top of the stairs, and Marianne and Lionel Foyster were on her heels.

"Where's the key to this door?" he demanded.

"It doesn't have one," Marianne exclaimed. "There's no lock!"

John tried the door handle again. It hadn't been his imagination – it wouldn't even twist, as if it were being held fast. There was no keyhole, but -

"It's _locked,_ Mrs. Foyster, there's no give – "

"For God's sake," Marianne snapped, "just somebody break it down or something!"

"Mummy!" Ashleigh screamed.

"Move over!" Sherlock, Charlie still in his arms, had just arrived on the landing, with Lestrade just behind. He gave Charlie to John and pushed Lionel aside to get through. "Back. Now."

"Sherlock -"

Sherlock slammed his heel into the door, just below the brass handle.

"Sherlock," John tried again over the sound of both Ashleigh and Charlie wailing. "If there's no lock, how can you break – "

Sherlock reached forward to try to the door handle. It stuck fast; he examined the frame for a second, then stood back and aimed another kick at it. A fine grey haze was now beginning to drift from under the door, carrying with it the bitter smell of smoke.

"Jesus Christ," Lestrade blurted out as the significance of this set in. By this time, Eric Smith and Harry Price had joined the group, though both were standing back with no idea of what to do. Lionel Foyster, as if taking the cue from Lestrade's words, turned his back to the door and, gripping the landing rail, started to pray aloud. Eric Smith joined him.

The door finally gave on the seventh kick. Sherlock staggered through the gap and over to the small fire that had started in one corner. Before he could take his own coat off, Lestrade had thrown his over the blaze and got down on the floor to smother it. Meanwhile, Marianne had bundled up Ashleigh and rushed her out into the hall.

"What the hell just happened?" Lestrade was still crouched on the floor, coughing in the smoke of the blaze he'd just extinguished. He stood up and removed his blackened, burned-through coat, inspecting the damage. Sherlock got down on his hands and knees beside, sniffing like a hound.

"No smell of accelerants," he muttered. "No evidence of matches or a cigarette lighter or anything else that could have started the fire. No object in this corner that could have burned, but for the skirting board itself..."

"Fires don't just start on their own," Lestrade protested.

"No, they don't. And since Ashleigh was the only person in a locked room where a fire broke out, it stands to reason that she started it. We need to ask her how."

"Sherlock, she's in _hysterics,"_ John snapped over the sound of his own daughter's crying. Marianne and Lionel had taken Ashleigh downstairs, but the echoes of her wailing could still be heard where they were standing. "We won't be asking her anything for a while..."

They looked at one another. The only sound now, beyond Charlie, was Eric Smith. He was still on the landing, praying thanks for the deliverance of Ashleigh Foyster.

* * *

"You know, maybe we shouldn't do this séance thing," John said at last.

They were sitting in the living room of the manor, nervous and reflective. Marianne had put Ashleigh to bed upstairs, but Charlie was on the floor "playing" with Jamie Foyster, who was two months older and about twice her size. John, watching them, couldn't help but smile. Charlie didn't have the opportunity to interact with a lot of children her age, but she was perfectly at ease. The grumpiness that had marked her first six months of life was easing off into smiles and sometimes even giggles.

"Why not?" Sherlock was standing in the doorway, hands wrapped around a cup of coffee.

John shifted in his seat. "It's just," he said, "I mean, it was all in fun before. I don't think _that_ was much fun for anybody. If there's something... you know, something not right in the rectory, maybe inviting it to have a conversation is a bad idea."

"That door has no lock, Sherlock," Marianne interrupted him urgently. She was limp and pale on the sofa next to her husband, and the hands that held her mug of tea were shaking. "So why did you have to break it down? There was nothing behind it. Ashleigh isn't strong enough to –"

"John," Sherlock said abruptly, "I need to talk to you outside. You too, Lestrade."

It was just after sunset, but the afterglow was strong enough light that they could see one another clearly in the rose garden behind the main building. Sherlock, who had been twitchy and shaken ever since Ashleigh Foyster's rescue, led them a little way down the path, then lit a cigarette, seemingly in no great hurry to begin. Just as John was on the verge of asking him to speed it up, he blurted out, "It's been me."

"What?"

Sherlock swiped the back of his hand over his mouth for a second. "Okay," he said guiltily. "I want you both to just shut up for a couple of minutes while I explain this properly. I haven't had a case since Christmas and _I. Am. Bored._ When I heard about the rectory, it was obvious right from the beginning that this 'haunted' rubbish was the doings of Marianne. Silly pranks from a woman also bored out of her mind, isolated in a tiny hamlet and tied to her husband and two small children. I contacted her, and we had some very illuminating phone conversations."

Of course. Sherlock had called her _Marianne_ from the beginning, because they already knew one another.

"Also obvious: Price is an idiot with a malicious streak. He's at least as interested in tearing me down as a detective as he is in investigating a possible haunting here. Marianne thinks as little of him as I do, so we decided to amuse ourselves by baiting him. We'd give him material for his report to the London SPR, and then tell him at the last minute that he'd been bested."

"And you did all this without telling us?"

Sherlock smiled for a second. "Consider it a good lesson in gullibility," he said, ashing his cigarette amongst Mabel Smith's prize-winning roses. "Whose word did you have for much of what's happened? Mine. I don't have a history of being trustworthy, as you both know. You thought I would never fake that phenomena, but why? Simply because I played the role of skeptic."

John stared at him in astonishment. "But Price – "

"Price researched me to find out about my sister," Sherlock said calmly. "I just had to make him believe I had no idea he'd done so, and at least had an open mind about it. When we arrived in Borley, Lionel told us Marianne was in London. She wasn't."

"She was in the rectory, writing on the walls and chucking sugar at me from the hall doorway," Lestrade groaned.

"And waiting upstairs when we returned to the rectory last night - it was important I reached the room first, so that I could let her out down the servants stairs while you were still on the main staircase in the dark. With the help of an old white dress laced heavily with strontium aluminate, she made a passable nun, too. Of course, I didn't expect that you'd actually go after her, John, so I had to do something to distract you – "

"So you threw _yourself_ on the floor," John said. "You're a complete idiot."

"You fell for it," Sherlock snapped.

"And the writing on the wall?" John, burning with embarrassment on having 'fell for it', ignored Sherlock's remark. "That wasn't your handwriting, or Marianne's."

"No, it wasn't my _right hand_ handwriting. You should know better than most people that ambidexterity produces two completely different sets of handwriting."

John shook his head in disbelief. "Oh, Jesus, Sherlock, really?"

_The 'ghost' called Marianne by her first name and Greg by his last name. Should have realised._

"And it was made with heat-activated invisible ink, I'd say," Lestrade muttered, snatching the cigarette out of Sherlock's hand and taking a puff, then handing it back. "So it'd look like it just appeared when you held a candle up to it."

"The reply?" John urged. "Rest, or pest, or whatever?"

Sherlock rocked back on his heels, smug. "Took me about five seconds to write that in pencil. And for the record, Price is ridiculously suggestible, and it said _rest._ "

"Sherlock –"

"But – no, John, listen." Sherlock grabbed his wrist to get his attention. "I know how this looks, and that's why I'm telling you this. Everything changed when we asked Ashleigh to draw the nun. Like I said, there _was never any nun._ At no point since the collaboration of the Domesday Book has there ever been a convent in Borley or a monastery at Bures."

John looked at him, trying to test whether he was telling the truth and reflecting that this was nearly impossible. The man could probably pass a lie detector test with flying colours. "You're sure?"

"I'm certain. I have a friend who works in the Bodleian. She owes me a favour, and she's spent the greater half of the past two days searching up any information possible on both Borley and Bures. Parish maps dating back to the thirteenth century show no sign of any convents or monasteries. But there's been a rectory of sorts on this site since the early fourteenth century, and during the Plague years it was used as a hospital and graveyard. I have no doubt that if the back of the present rectory was dug up, we'd find many bones dating from that period."

"You said the skull was medieval."

"Yes. Despite what she liked to tell her husband, Marianne never saw a nun, and the one _you_ saw on the lawn was her. So when Marianne claimed Ashleigh had seen a nun, I was surprised – but I expected her to draw some figment of her imagination. What she drew... that was a game changer."

John suddenly reflected that Ashleigh's drawing was the first thing that had visibly shaken both Sherlock and Marianne.

"None of us locked Ashleigh into a room with no key," he went on. "And none of us started that fire. We were all accounted for when it happened, John, and every one of us saw that that door wouldn't open until I forced it."

"Yeah, speaking of which, since when do you know how to kick down a door?"

Sherlock ignored this. "Price is a fraud, but there's no evidence to suggest he'd lock up a small child and start a fire just to make an impression."

"He seemed as surprised as anyone," Lestrade said.

"I think 'surprised' is an understatement," Sherlock remarked. "If we're going to get to the bottom of this case, we need more data. This séance will be data, do you see? It will give me an opportunity to watch Price – and the others."

"The others?"

"I can't rule anyone in or out at this stage. Even the good men of God have admitted to faking some of the phenomena."

John sighed heavily, covering his eyes with his hand for a moment. "Okay," he finally muttered. "All right. We'll do this your way. On one condition."

"Oh?" Sherlock raised one eyebrow; he'd reached the end of his cigarette and stubbed it out under one heel.

"You'll take that cortisone injection."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "John – "

"You didn't _fake_ breaking two vertebrae last Christmas, Sherlock. And you didn't fake kicking down a door, either. That would've hurt _my_ back. You may not be feeling it much now, but you'll be in agony tomorrow unless – "

"Fine." Sherlock ran his hand through his dark curls. "If it'll get you off my case, and let me continue this one."

* * *

John had left his case in the rectory, and ducked across to get it before they lost the evening light entirely. He'd returned to the manor with it, and almost reached the living-room door, when he heard a sudden scream – Jamie, not Charlie – and Molly exclaiming sharply, "Oh, _Charlotte Mary Watson!"_

John blinked. It was the first time either of them had had cause to give Charlie the full-name reprimand. "What did she do?" he demanded, arriving in the doorway just in time to see Molly scoop up Charlie. Jamie was still sitting on the rug, red-faced and crying, a blue Lego block clutched in one chubby fist. Lionel, grinning shame-facedly, picked him up.

"Don't be too hard on her," he said to Molly. Charlie had never been scolded by her mother before, and she was howling as well. "Jamie needs to learn to play nicely."

John was still looking at Molly, but it was Lionel who answered his question.

"Oh, nothing awful happened," he said. In his arms, Jamie was winding down already. "Jamie snatched a block out of Charlie's hands. She bopped him over the head for it."

"Oh, my God," John groaned, putting his face in his hands for a second. "We're doing this already? She's only nine months old..."

_What do I do with her? She's not even old enough to be told to go over and apologise!_

"I'm so sorry," Molly said, trying to quieten Charlie.

"Oh, it happens," Mabel Smith said as she bustled in to collect everyone's empty coffee cups. "The first time I saw our boy push another one over in nursery school, I thought I was going to sink through the ground in embarrassment. But he grew up to be a good man, like his father." She smiled at Eric. "I suppose I should put dinner on. You'll all need some nourishment if you're going to be spending the evening in that dank old cellar."

"You'll not be joining us then, Mrs. Smith?" Price asked her.

"No, I most certainly won't," she said. "Absolute nonsense. And anyhow, someone needs to look after the children while you're all over there shivering over a candle, talking to the ghosts."

John glanced at Molly. "You want to join in?"

She shrugged and smiled. "It can't hurt, can it? I've never been in a séance before."

John had to reflect that he wasn't Molly's keeper and had no right to forbid her to join in a séance held by a man she still regarded as "a celebrity." Besides, if she was up for seeking justice for Evie Sadler, she was certainly up for finding out who had terrorised Ashleigh Foyster. Quiet battles, over a phone or a desk or a candle at midnight, were Molly's forte.


	13. Riddles in the Dark

"Ow!"

"Well, stop moving, then," John said distractedly. They were sitting in the relative privacy of the Smith's bedroom, and the army doctor was just then reflecting on how long it had been since he'd given someone an intramuscular injection and whether they'd complained quite this much. Surgeon's hands, indeed.

"You have the worst bedside manner of any doctor I've ever known," Sherlock grouched.

"And you're the most annoying patient I've had in ages," John replied, withdrawing the needle and pressing a towelette up against the tiny drop of blood it had left in its wake. "Hold that there."

He waited until Sherlock had a hold on it before turning to dispose of the needle in the sharps box. Then he dumped it back into his case, snapped his gloves off, and carefully sealed them in plastic. As he did, he heard Sherlock mutter something that sounded very much like, "that hurt more than the door did."

"Look," he said, sitting down. "God knows the last thing I want is to have a touchy-feely talk with you, but I'm just worried, okay? I can tell when you're in pain. It's my _job_ to be able to tell when someone's in pain."

Sherlock glanced down. "I know."

"It's just too bad I can't tell when you're lying through your teeth. Though I've got to tell you, I'm glad most of this was a prank." John smiled for a second. "And you're lucky that I don't blog anymore. 'And then Sherlock ran up a staircase carrying a baby and kicked down a door to save a toddler' would make a great blog entry, but I don't think it'd help you win any High Functioning Sociopath awards." He paused, looking down at his hands and realising he was mirroring Molly's nervous habit of twisting her wedding ring. "Actually, Sherlock, speaking of that kind of thing, there's a case you might be able to help out with. A bit."

"Yes. Molly came all the way here to tell you about it," Sherlock said, testing gingerly with one finger to see if he was still bleeding. "So it's serious."

"It is." John explained the evidence against Ross Harding, so far as he understood it. Surprisingly, Sherlock listened without interrupting as he unravelled it. "We're going home tomorrow to get this sorted out," he finally wrapped it up. "And see if Mycroft can help us out any more."

"Mycroft?" Sherlock raised one eyebrow.

"Yeah, she went to see him at his office yesterday morning, just, y'know. Asking if he could help us out with things. Pull a few strings to make sure our car isn't firebombed."

"She asked Mycroft?"

John smiled briefly. "I wouldn't feel too bad," he said, seeing the look that had crossed Sherlock's face and understanding what it meant. "She asked him before she asked _me_ , and I'm married to her."

Sherlock processed this. "If he's known about it since yesterday morning, I daresay Mycroft is on the case already," he finally said. "Sending in authorities to seize financial records from the hospital and Berrimer before they work out what Molly's up to and destroy them in a panic."

This had never even occurred to John. "Clever move," he admitted.

"In a way. If it could be proved that either facility were guilty of organs trafficking _and_ destroyed their own incriminating information, it might be better – it would certainly result in a greater jail sentence for those involved. Though, of course, the point of under-the-table transactions is that there _are_ no official records of these things. Can I get up now?"

"Yeah, go on. But if you were back in London, you'd be under orders to stay flat on the sofa for the rest of the night and half of tomorrow, so just take it easy, okay? Trust me, you're more or less surrounded with people who know how to break into a locked room."

* * *

Just before dinner, Marianne went upstairs to wake Ashleigh and coax her into having her dinner in bed. She came back down, without her small daughter, just as the rest of the adults were sitting down at the table. After an awkward grace Sherlock, totally uninterested in the meal before him, spoke. "So, Marianne," he said. "Did Ashleigh mention anyone else in the room with her?"

Marianne shook her head. "Of course, she's only little. She can't really explain things that have happened to her – not properly. But from what I can get out of her, she saw the fire start on its own and started screaming until the door opened." She smiled weakly. "I'm sorry, but I'm actually glad she doesn't understand what we're all so upset about."

Lestrade looked over at Sherlock. "Timed arson device, maybe?" he suggested. "I know there was nothing on the skirting board, but what about the ceiling below?"

"We walked past it," Eric Smith said through the minted peas he'd just shovelled into his mouth. "The parlour is the room right below it. I was showing everyone the vents I used to play pranks when I was a kid. We'd have noticed if there had been anything odd there, and that was only a few minutes before..."

Sherlock glanced at Marianne, who almost imperceptibly shook her head. Sherlock half reproached himself – of course. There was no way that Marianne was going to either plant an arson device in the room below her daughter, or conceal it if someone else did.

"We'll have a look at it," he said warily. "But on the balance of probabilities, you would have noticed something like bare wiring in a house that otherwise has none, and it's very unlikely anyone had the time, resources and opportunity to take apart the space between floors to conceal an arson device."

* * *

When the meal was finally over, and Mabel Smith had taken on the task of preparing tea for everyone, Lestrade took his cigarettes and slipped outside. Instead of fertilising the roses with yet more cigarette ash, he went around the side of the building and wandered toward the road.

The afterglow had disappeared, and the night was wholly dark. The air had a damp smell, as if of incoming rain; in the culvert where Eric Smith had played so many pranks as a child, a chorus of frogs were croaking dolefully. Lighting up, Lestrade looked across at the hulking rectory, now looming ominously in the moonless night. A light breeze had just sprung up, sending the oak trees trembling. Before he could let his imagination get the better of him, he pulled out his very sensible and non-paranormal phone and thumbed his home phone number in. Melissa answered on the third ring.

"Hi, it's me," he said. "Not interrupting any dates with your TV boyfriends, am I?"

"'Pause' is a wonderful button," she said cheerfully. "How's everything going over there? You're smoking. I can _hear_ you smoking."

"This is a madhouse. We're about to have a séance, and it's a long story, but I need a new coat."

"Hayley and I are going out to spend some money tomorrow. I'll keep my eyes open for one. But everyone's okay? Nobody's lost any limbs?"

"No, nothing like that." Lestrade decided not to tell Melissa that John's family had unexpectedly arrived that afternoon, reasoning that if she hadn't mentioned it herself, she didn't know and probably wasn't supposed to. Collecting his nerves, he said, "Uh, yeah. Wasn't really ringing to tell you about the drama up this way. Um. Mel, just... I need to know. Have I buggered this up for good?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, well..." He made a flailing gesture with his cigarette. "Let's just _say_ I came home and I'd really, actually changed my mind about getting married. Would you believe me, even if I said it?"

"That's a good question," she said thoughtfully, trailing off. "I don't know, Greg. I suppose so. If you came home and proposed, and it was just to shut me up..."

"What – hypothetically – would I need to do to convince you that it _wasn't_ just to shut you up?"

He could hear the sound of footsteps on the line, and then the very unique _clunk_ of the kitchen window being shut. She was wandering around with the phone, and Lestrade suddenly hoped to God neither of the kids were listening in. "Be sincere," she said at last. "I'd need to know you were being sincere. And I can tell when you're not, Greg."

"Okay." He was silent for a few seconds. "So what else would I _hypothetically_ , I mean, would you want to choose your own ring, or..."

"Absolutely," she said without the slightest hesitation. "If I'm wearing something on my hand every day of my life, I want it to be something I like. And I'd first expect you to ask your kids for their blessings, too."

"What if they wouldn't give their blessings?"

"I don't think you're _hypothetically_ going to have that problem... shit."

"What?"

"Dinner's burning. Gotta go, love you!"

Before Lestrade could respond, he was listening to a dial tone. He chuckled a little as he disconnected the call and put the phone in his pocket. Impossible to tell whether Melissa had used the dinner as an excuse to get off the phone or if she was telling the truth. A domestic goddess she was not.

* * *

"I hope you're not planning on bringing Charlotte to a séance."

Molly jumped. She was standing at the kitchen sink, helping Mabel wash up; the older woman had wandered off to the linen closet to find another dish towel, and she hadn't noticed Sherlock until he was hovering over her shoulder.

"Oh! You scared me." She smiled and swiped her soapy hands on the sopping towel beside. "And oh, no, of course not. The Smiths are going to look after the little ones. Eric doesn't want to join in either. I don't suppose I blame him. That whole thing with Ashleigh... it was horrible."

Sherlock was smileless, and apparently fascinated with the toes of his shoes.

"Molly," he said, muttering the words into his chest. "I'd just like to clarify that I hold you in the highest regard. I consider you a friend... and I hope that I've given you enough reason in the past to trust me – "

She shook her head, dazed. "What are you talking about?" she asked gently.

He exhaled and looked up at her, with no glimmer of mischief or sarcasm in his keen grey eyes. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you?"

"About the Barts case. John's just told me about it, and said you went to Mycroft. You could have come to _me_. I can help you. I'm the detective, not my brother."

"Yes, well..." She glanced away. "Well, you know, I didn't really consult Mycroft as a detective. More as a... well, as a bureaucrat, I suppose." She bit her lip. "I'm sorry," she said indulgently. "I didn't really think it was going to hurt your feelings."

"You used to trust me, Molly." Sherlock was keeping an eye on who was walking past. "I need to know if I've done anything that made you stop trusting me."

"No... oh, God, no," she blurted out, awkwardly patting his arm. "No, it was... it's just, with the trial, and this case, and... I only told _John_ about it today."

"Yes, he said." Sherlock exhaled again. "I sometimes don't notice when I... do something wrong..." He stopped and straightened up a little. "Anyhow," he said. "Four years ago, you helped save my life. I told you I'd return that in any way I could. That offer's still outstanding. Will you let me know if I can uphold my end of it?"

She shook her head. "No," she said. "Because there was no bargain, Sherlock. Friends don't make bargains like that."

"You consider me a friend?" Sherlock blinked.

"Of course I do," she said promptly.

"Not just John's friend?"

"No, mine as well. I was your friend for years before I ever met John. I was desperately in love with you, actually – no – well, I _thought_ I was, but – I just mean..." She took a deep breath. "Sorry. But what's wrong, Sherlock? We've never had this conversation before. I know we had some problems... when you came back... but that's in the past, isn't it? When Charlie was born... Sherlock, I'm not angry at you."

There was a brief silence between them before Sherlock cleared his throat. Mabel, who had been waylaid in the living room assisting Eric in the names and dates of an anecdote he was telling, was on her way back.

"All right," he said. "Then I'll take you at your word. But I'd prefer in future to be consulted on all potential cases and make up my own mind whether they're worthy of my time and effort."

* * *

The kitchen cellar at Borley Rectory was a large rectangular room with the feel of an air raid shelter, low-roofed and smelling strongly of damp earth and rotting grass clippings. Harry had employed Lestrade to help him move a large, round table into the centre of it. He'd produced dozens of candles from somewhere. Apart from a single candelabra nearby, these were all arranged on the floor, running along the walls, throwing ghastly shadows up into everyone's faces.

For the first time since her death, John had an uncomfortable feeling that he was doing something his mother would definitely not approve of.

But Price certainly hadn't decked the place out with the half-expected pentagrams and magic circles in salt. On the table, the numbers one through to ten had been taped down; underneath was the alphabet, and on either side of this arrangement, the words _yes_ and _no_ had been similarly taped down. In the middle of this sat a large, heavy glass tumbler.

Price himself, for all his talk of the supernatural, looked quite modern and sensible. Far from the stereotypical turban and robe of his profession, he was dressed in his ordinary clothes, and took his seat at the table in a matter-of-fact way.

"Sit wherever you like," he said, gesturing. "The table is round for a reason. But I do ask that once the séance starts, you don't do anything to disrupt or break any connection we may make to the other world."

"What's that mean?" Lestrade asked, sitting down. He, too, looked businesslike, clasping his hands on the table and looking across at Price as if he were questioning a witness.

"I can't say what might happen, but it may be disturbing," Price said. "I may speak in a strange voice, or start automatic writing. You may hear raps, or groaning, or see an apparition. It's natural to be alarmed, but if you suspect you might not be able to cope with any strange events, I really do ask that you not participate."

John wondered if Price realised that, with the possible exception of the Foysters, his words were encouraging them.

"Also," he continued, "laughing, expressions of contempt or disbelief... these can also break a connection to the other side, or prevent one from being set up. Much like we the living, the spirits don't like being mocked. I can't remove the doubt in your minds, but I do ask both that you don't express it and that you do your best not to dwell on it while the sitting is taking place. Mr. Holmes..."

Sherlock, nodding, sat down at the table with more drama than was necessary. John sat down on Sherlock's right. To his own right was Molly, then Lestrade, Marianne, Lionel, and Price closed the circle to Sherlock's left.

"Mr. Holmes," Price said again. "Can you see well enough in this light to write whatever the spirits may tell us?"

"Yes." Sherlock reached across the table for the pen and paper Price passed to him. There was another near his left elbow, apparently in case of any automatic writing.

"The glass may move quickly at times," Price said.

"I write quickly."

"Excellent. If we all agree to participate, shall we begin?"

John glanced at Molly, but she was looking back at him, calm and unafraid. Under the table, she slipped her hand in his and gave it a warm squeeze.

"So how do we do this?" he asked.

"Everyone place fingertips on the glass," Price said. "Gently, so that there's contact but no pressure. Be silent, and concentrate on putting all your energy toward the spirit world and any contact we might make. If you're not able to do that without negativity, try to neutralise your thoughts until they are quiet. Calm blue oceans, and so on. Whatever will bring you into a relaxed and receptive state. You don't need to close your eyes, but you can, if that helps you."

John had suffered through a few calm-blue-ocean ordeals in therapy of years gone by, and briefly wondered if it would be more successful for him to speculate on the spirit world. Afraid that even _glancing_ at Sherlock would set them both off into fits of extremely immature giggling, he shut his eyes.

Calm blue oceans. Completely ridiculous.

Instead, he tried to remember Afghanistan sunsets that flowed across the landscape like water and turned the desert sand magenta. Unbidden, what actually came into his head was an alpine meadow in a strange landscape, and a blue sky that rapidly turned grey and menacing as clouds rolled in, so low they hid the tops of the peaks beyond. A blast of cold wind had just set the mountain grasses trembling when he was brought out of his thoughts by Harry's calm monotone.

"Is there anyone there?" he asked. "Are we in the presence of a spirit?"

There was such a long pause that John was _sure_ one of them was going to start laughing when the glass grew slightly warm under the two fingers he rested on it. It slid toward him until it landed over the word: _yes._

"Spirit, what is your name?"

There was another long stretch of silence. Then the glass zoomed the opposite side of the table, toward Lionel, coasting from one letter to another.

S-U-N-E-X A-M-U-R-E-S.

John half expected Sherlock to start sniggering, but he scrawled the name down using his left hand, while keeping his right on the glass.

"Thank you, spirit, for making contact with us," Price continued in his odd monotone. "We are in the veil between two worlds, and we are honoured to be your guests. Spirit, is it you who is haunting this rectory?"

The glass zoomed again. _Yes._

"Are there others here, besides you?"

_Yes._

"Spirit, what are their names?"

There was a sudden flurry of movement from the glass, so much that Molly gave a little gasp and pitched forward, as if she was being dragged across the table. The glass moved from letter to letter in rough, aggressive jerks unlike the smooth sliding movements of before; it was as if a new person had suddenly wrenched the glass from the first. As minutes passed with no letting up on the glass's movements, John gave up trying to follow the sequence of letters. Instead, he leaned over to read what Sherlock was transcribing, as fast as his left hand could scrawl:

_Raim Labal Balam Ipes Decarabia Naberus Eligos Haures Abaddon Gremory Dantalion Forneus Gaap Carmelo Sabnock Agares Focalor Canio Paimon Alastor Malphas Bathin Orias Orobas Andras Moloch Baal Seir Valac Astaroth Legion Legion Legion Legion Legion Legion Legion..._


	14. Ignis a Caede Revelabit

Demons. These were the names of demons.

John was sure of it, even though he was only vaguely familiar with a handful of the names – Baal, Moloch, Astaroth. Legion. _Some Bible story... and Jesus asked the demon, what is your name? And then the demon replied, my name is Legion, for we are many._

"Spirit," Price said loudly over the flurrying from the glass. "What do you want?"

_Reliqua._

"Rest," Sherlock muttered, so low that John could barely hear him. Before he could say any more aloud, he was forced to concentrate as the glass moved again.

_Ignis a caede revelabit_

"When?" Sherlock broke in, calm but out of turn.

_Maius IX_

John had almost no knowledge of Latin, beyond a few scraps of religious and medical terminology. _Ignis a caede revelabit_ meant very little to him. But this one he made out instantly – May 9th. Two days away.

"Do you mean us harm?" Sherlock asked, ignoring Price's glare for interrupting again.

For a few seconds, the glass was still, and there was very little sound in the room but breathing.

"Do you mean to harm us?" Sherlock persisted impatiently.

Then glass seemed to tremble for a second. Then it crept over the word again:

_Yes._

"Yes," Sherlock read out aloud. "You couldn't remember the Latin for that one, I suppose? This is absurd."

Price opened his mouth as if to say something. Before he could, there was a sudden surge of pressure on the glass, which shot out wide with enough force that it hit the concrete wall and smashed into slivers. The candles extinguished themselves in one breath, plunging the cellar into darkness. Marianne screamed, and there was a sudden burst of exclamations ranging from the mildly annoyed to barely contained panic.

"Oh, what the hell?" Greg Lestrade's no-nonsense tones overpowered the others. "Right. Everyone calm down."

John found Molly's hand under the table. She was still sitting beside him, tense but silent; it was too dark to make out her expression. It was only a couple of seconds before there was a hiss of ignited butane and a spark of flame from over where Lestrade was sitting.

"Told you my smoking would come in handy for a case one day," he muttered, groping around on the floor for the nearest candle and lighting it again, using its weak halo to locate other candles nearby. "Oh, look, Sherlock. We found someone who's even more dramatic and childish than you are."

"Demons," Marianne whispered before Sherlock could snipe back. "Oh, my God, those are the names of _demons_ , Sherlock..."

"Anyone could have directed the glass to the name _Baal_ ," Sherlock responded. "It doesn't make it true."

"Wait, that 'ignis' stuff," John interrupted. _Ignis_. _Igneus. Type of rock... something about volcanos? Ignite? Ignition?_ "Something about a fire?"

Molly leaned over to him in the half light and whispered it in his ear. "It meant, _fire will reveal a murder."_

"The veil to the other world is still open," Price, who hadn't moved from his seat, said anxiously. "Please, everyone, sit down so we can continue..."

"No, I'm done here." Sherlock stood, casting a long shadow over the table from the candles Lestrade was still crouched next to behind him. "I think I've learned everything I need to know about what's going on."

"And what's that?"

Sherlock looked hard at Price for a few minutes. "That you, Mr. Price, would do well to spend tonight in your hotel room," he said. "The rest of us will stay here and keep one last watch, though I don't expect we'll see anything. Thirty demons in the rectory? I think most of them have been slacking off."

"We should go and get Charlie," Molly murmured, standing up, her hand still in John's.

* * *

"So you two will be okay here?"

John was looking around the little hotel room, slightly wistfully. The thick-mattressed double bed and plush carpet seemed like heaven compared to the sleeping bag on bare floorboards he was going back to. Molly had originally been happy to share a bed with Charlie, but the night porter had managed to procure a rickety white-framed cot from somewhere, and Charlie was fast asleep in it. The most concern the day had given her had been her first encounter with parental disapproval, not demons.

Molly laced her fingers in John's. "I wish you'd stay here with me," she said, smiling. "But not because I'm scared..."

He brushed his lips up against the soft curve of her neck. "I know. But they're waiting for me," he said regretfully. Molly had the family car; Lestrade and Sherlock were parked outside, waiting to give John a lift back to the rectory with them. "Besides," he went on, his voice muffled a little by her heavy cascade of hair. "Sherlock will know. And he'll point it out. Really loudly..."

She laughed. Sherlock _had_ made a few rather intrusive personal remarks to that effect in the sixteen months since his return. She thought back, with a flush of embarrassment, about Mycroft's comment in his office the day before. She had no idea in the world how Mycroft could know that she and John had abandoned any form of birth control the month before, and wasn't sure she wanted to find out.

"Raincheck?" he asked, laying his palms on the back of her neck and looking earnestly at her. "You know I always honour those."

"You boys," she said softly, running her finger over his chin. "You're always running silly bargains and rainchecks..."

"Hmm?"

She explained about Sherlock's conversation with her in the manor kitchen. "I didn't think he was going to take it personally," she said regretfully, pulling a lock of hair behind her ear.

"Poor sod," John said. "Feels left out of everything. I can't blame him. You remember how pissed off I was when he wouldn't let me in on the Edalji case."

She nodded. Yes, she definitely remembered that. "What was he talking about, about trust?" she asked. "He's never asked that before."

"I don't know. But I'll talk to him."

* * *

John decided, though, that any conversation with Sherlock about the Sadler case could wait until the night was through. Sherlock, for his part, seemed focused on the Borley case. It was again a night of investigation for just the three of them; the Foysters had returned to the Manor, with Lionel muttering darkly about contacting the bishop for an exorcism. When they returned to the dark rectory, Sherlock suggested they split up again.

"What are you expecting to happen?" John asked him. Price had been the first to leave, headed for his own hotel room in Sudbury, and he'd taken most of his ghost-hunting equipment with him. But Sherlock still had his own equipment to work with. He was crouched on the floor of the landing, fiddling with a digital sound recorder.

"Don't know," he said tersely over one shoulder.

"Then why are we doing this?"

Sherlock spun back on one heel and looked up at him. "I don't know yet," he repeated obstinately. "And it's a better investigative technique to simply observe than to expect a particular outcome and inadvertently create it."

"That stuff," Lestrade said. He was hovering over Sherlock with his arms folded, watching what he was doing in the dim light. "About the fire."

"Oh, bunk." Sherlock rose and exhaled. "No demon or monk would ever have written like that. I've seen more fluent Latin come out of skid-row Comprehensives."

"Oi," Lestrade, who'd attended a skid-row Comprehensive school for six years, protested.

"There's no reason to believe we were speaking with monks, nuns, demons, or spirits," Sherlock went on, ignoring him. "We were speaking to someone sitting right there at the table, whether they knew they were doing it or not."

"What, you mean, like Marianne?" Lestrade said. "Her husband said she might be doing things without realising... but that makes no sense. She was more scared than any of us, and Ashleigh – "

"I don't know about Ashleigh yet," Sherlock snapped. "But I intend to find out. Just trust me."

John had learned over the years to trust Sherlock Holmes. But lying on his sleeping bag on the floor of the far landing bedroom, he reflected to himself that he didn't have to like it much. He laid out his nearly-charged mobile phone on the floorboards beside him; the best he could do if he needed an emergency torch, voice recorder or camera. He had no idea where Greg had gone; but above the mad flurry of the owls in the roof, he heard a series of obsessive clicks from the direction of the master bedroom. Sherlock was fiddling with his digital recorder again.

* * *

John was dreaming again of an alpine meadow and an ice-cold wind that shook every leaf and blade of grass into a trembling frenzy. Dark clouds descended, then a bank of fog rolled in, smothering the emerald grass and blotting out the sky. And then, half-lucid, he realised it wasn't fog.

It was smoke.

And he was wide awake on a sleeping bag in the far hall bedroom of the rectory, looking up at the dark beamed ceiling. The night seemed peaceful still; but the draught under the door was warm and brought with it the rancid stench of smoke. From beyond it, somewhere downstairs, he heard the cracks and snaps of flames.

_Shit._

He scrambled to his feet and threw the door open. Immediately, he was hit by a towering wave of heat. The black smoke that had drifted onto the landing stung at his eyes, but even half-blinded, he could see a glow of red from the eastern side of the landing, in the direction of the master bedroom.

"Sherlock!" he rasped, stumbling toward the room he'd last seen him in, toward the fire, toward the staircase, toward the only exit that he was aware of. If that was on fire...

He never finished that thought, as a gust of black smoke slammed into him from the far end of the corridor.

"Sherlock!" he called again, but what came out was no more than a croak. "Greg!"

He fumbled forward with one hand until he found the stair railing. It was hot to touch but, peering into the darkness and smoke, he thought it may not have caught fire yet. But he could see little else except the glow of flames, which now whipped forward along the landing at a frightening speed. It was hemming him in; there may only, he realised, be seconds left before the staircase went up or the flames cut it off. But if he went down the stairs, there was every likelihood he would never be able to climb them again.

A vice-like grip seized his shoulder and he gave a yelp of alarm, sucking more smoke into his lungs.

"Move," Sherlock said. He was close by, but the smoke and the night were both too thick to see him.

"Sherlock -"

"Move!"

Then John felt himself being driven ahead by the shoulder, down the staircase and through the dark, choked passage. He shut his eyes – trying to use them was a worthless cause, anyway - and stumbled headlong as embers and hot ash rained down from the high ceiling above.

There was an almighty crash as every pane of glass in the eastern side of the building shattered.

John felt himself thrown roughly against the wall behind; he had no idea if they were in one of the rooms, the hall, or anywhere else in the building. Sherlock still had his arm.

"I can't breathe," he tried to get out, but all he could do is mouth the words. Then his face stung as a piece of thick material, dotted with red-hot ash, was shoved up against his mouth.

"Breathe into that," Sherlock said, his own voice choked. John clutched what he later found was Sherlock's scarf against his mouth; then he felt Sherlock pull at his arm again and shove him along through a column of smoke until, at last, he was thrown down face-first. After a few dazed seconds, he felt cool, damp grass underneath his face and hands.

He'd reached the dark rectory lawn. So, too, had Sherlock. He was smeared black as a coal-miner and bent almost double, coughing black mucous onto the grass at his feet.

"Where's Greg?" John demanded.

Sherlock straightened up and looked around the night fields, dazed, as if he expected to see him somewhere nearby. He blinked as the penny dropped. "Oh my God," he blurted out.

John scrabbled to his feet just in time, grabbing Sherlock's shoulder so hard that the force nearly pulled both of them to the ground. "What are you doing?" he demanded. "No. _No_. The rectory's on bloody _fire_ , you're not going back in to -"

"He gets _lost,_ John!" The soot on Sherlock's face brought his eyes out into almost sharp relief, even in the dim glow of the inferno before them. "How do you think he's going to find his way out in that...?"

John was still clutching Sherlock's arm, but this was more for his own benefit than Sherlock's. He dug his heels into the soft earth at his feet, trying to stop the world from spinning.

Sherlock was right. Greg had no idea how to navigate the rectory, even in broad daylight.

"I'm coming in with you," he got out.

"No. I need you here. If I can't find the door either... please, for God's sake, stay here. I may need you to... guide us out..."

Before John could protest, Sherlock had shaken off his grip and disappeared through the front door of the rectory again.

_Guide us out?_

John raced down to Greg's car, finding it locked. In desperation, he went further down the drive and kicked hard at the board fence, knocking a paling loose and pulling the stump out of the soft ground. The back passenger window was made of sterner stuff than he'd expected, and it took several attempts to shatter it. Ignoring the jagged chunks of broken glass it left in its wake, he reached through the car, giving the horn a few urgent blasts to alert the residents of the manor. He glanced across to where it lay almost hidden by darkness and thick-set oak trees; it was a long way back from the road, and no light shone in any of its windows.

He blasted the horn again, then he slid open the locked boot. Fumbling briefly, he found the Beretta and staggered back up the drive to the rectory front door with it.

Sherlock and Greg were both still inside somewhere. And through the window of the bedroom John had been sleeping in ten minutes before, flames were belching like a dragon's breath.

Even Sherlock had once got lost in the house – in daylight and with full vision. Visibility in the burning rectory was zero. If he couldn't find the way out again...

John got as close to the front doorway as he safely could. Then he lifted the pistol and fired it into the air, blasting open the night.


	15. Four Minutes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for your feedback, guys xx

_Twenty-nine, twenty-eight..._

John knew that the gun held eight bullets. He also knew that if Sherlock and Greg were in the burning rectory for longer than around four minutes, there would be no point in firing it anymore.

He could hear no sounds of human life from inside the building, but explosions of glass and the roar of fire devouring the old wooden constructs. There was another sound, one that John didn't want to acknowledge – ominous, loud cracks and thuds as those constructs lost their strength to the flames. It wouldn't be long before they came down – the staircase, the floor, walls and finally, the gable roof.

Shouting was a lost cause, and he had neither the time nor the breath to rush back down to the car and blast the horn again. There was little chance that this would help Sherlock find his way out again, anyway. As for the residents of the manor, he could see through the trees that the lights from two windows were now shining.

_Three... two... one..._

Heat flashed over his bare hand as he fired again. In the ear-ringing shockwave that followed he heard a distant cry, but not from the rectory. He looked over his shoulder. Marianne Foyster was running toward him, bare feet nimbly skimming over the grass. She had a white kimono wrapped around her shoulders, and for a second John remembered her graceful turn as the white-clad nun on the lawn the night before.

"What happened?" she gasped, pulling to an abrupt stop and glancing at the gun in John's hand as if she had only just realised what it was, and what he was doing with it. "Oh, my God," she said, "are the others still in there? Did you call the fire department?"

"Don't know where my phone is... wasn't time..."

By this time Lionel, with his slower, stiffer gait, had caught up to his wife. He was looking around, eager to do something to help but seemingly incapable of thinking what. Eric Smith, still in his tweed-pattern pyjamas and a grey woollen nightcap, was still halfway up the path. He held a phone to his ear and was probably calling emergency services.

"Stand back," John said, though Marianne was already so far back that, with his parched, singed throat, he had to fight hard to be heard against the sound of the fire. "It's... it's not safe..."

"Oh my God," Marianne whimpered into her hand. "Oh my God, the demon... it said..."

She was cut off by a ground-shaking crash from within the rectory as the grand staircase collapsed. Marianne screamed, and John threw himself down onto the path. But before he could register the full horror of what the shattered staircase would mean for Sherlock and Greg, they abruptly appeared. Sherlock was pulling Greg along behind him by one sleeve.

"Keep moving," John heard him growl through his teeth.

Lestrade was staggering; by the time they reached the far side of the lawn, Sherlock seemed to be almost dragging him along. When he finally let go, both of them flopped down, exhausted and gasping, onto the damp grass. John, glancing them over, quickly decided Greg was the more urgent case and dropped down beside him.

"Can you breathe?" he demanded, yanking so urgently at his collar that he broke the button rather than unfastened it.

Lestrade nodded. He was wheezing heavily but, John conceded, he was definitely breathing. He glanced up at Sherlock, who was now back on his feet and pacing unsteadily.

"Sherlock?"

"Fine." He ran one hand through his hair, now singed here and there from stray embers, and flinched. Even in the darkness John, glancing at Sherlock's hands, could see they hadn't gone through two fire rescues unscathed.

"Mr. Holmes, are you all right?" Lionel Foyster asked him. Sherlock did not react for a second or two, then turned to face him, planting his left foot back to steady himself.

"Yes," he ground out, though he both sounded and looked a little confused. "Yes. Fine..."

Lionel, as if recognising the odd way Sherlock had responded, turned to John instead. "Dr. Watson," he said, "can I do something to help?"

John was still trying to make out, in the darkness, how badly burned Sherlock's hands might be. "Yes, you can. Take Sherlock down to the stream and tell him to put his hands in it," he ordered. "And keep them there until the ambulance arrives. If he complains that it hurts, make him anyway, and tell him that's the best news I've heard in ages."

"Come on," Lionel said, laying one hand gingerly on Sherlock's shoulder blade and encouraging him over to the nearby tree line, where a small stream that ran through nearby woods went underground over the rectory grounds. "Let's have a look at your hands, Mr. Holmes..."

"My hands are fine," John heard him protest, but before he could overrule Sherlock's opinion, Greg gave a rough gasp.

"What?"

"Jesus," he croaked out, looking at a spot somewhere over John's shoulder. "Who's that...?"

John followed his gaze to where it rested on one of the upper floor windows, one he later found out was a small bedroom next to the chapel.

Through smoke and darkness, they could make out very little of her, except that her hair fell in dark waves over her shoulders, and her red dress blossomed out from her hips like the petals on a frangipani. She seemed calm and unafraid, looking out over the lawn with almost obscene disinterest.

And then she was gone. She neither moved nor faded away; one moment she was there, and the next, she wasn't.

* * *

 

"I'll tell you what, I am _not_ staying here overnight," Lestrade said, as firmly as his strained voice would allow him just then. "Got better things to do..."

"Yes. Like arresting an arsonist," Sherlock replied grimly.

Two and a half hours later, just as the first light of dawn was tinting the sky tangerine and pink, the three of them were sitting in the Outpatients waiting room of the local hospital. Although the idea of his being admitted and held overnight for observation had been brought up once or twice, it hadn't been ordered, and Lestrade was determined that he'd be leaving the hospital that morning on his own two feet. On arrival at the hospital he'd been found to be covered in innumerable small cuts, including a deep one over his left eyebrow that none of them had even noticed until a doctor pointed it out. He'd been given a ventilator, but after eighteen minutes he'd distractedly taken the mask off and said he could breathe just as well without the bloody thing, thank you very much.

It had been a lot of waiting, broken by the occasional arrival of medical staff to provide care that was not needed or too late to be effective. Molly, who'd suffered the long wait with them, had gone to see if she could find a doctor who would approve their release. She'd left Charlie with them. More specifically, she'd left her on Sherlock's knee, where she was placidly gnawing on one chubby fist.

Sherlock, despite his apparent lack of paternal urges and the first and second-degree burns on his hands and forearms, had raised no objections to this. And John, who had come off best from the fire but disoriented through sleep deprivation and smoke inhalation, had spent the last few minutes trying to work out why.

"'S' Mel coming?" he finally changed the subject, nudging Greg beside him.

"Yeah." Lestrade fidgeted with his watch. He'd smashed the face of it somewhere in the process of getting out of the rectory, but it was apparently still running.

"She knows we're okay, though, right?"

"Yeah. Didn't talk for long, 'cause she was keen to get a move on, but I didn't tell her anyone'd died..." Lestrade trailed off. Molly was making her way back to them, and John stood up to greet her.

"Okay," she said in apologetic tones. "So they said they'd be over with the paperwork as soon as possible."

Lestrade groaned. "And with the NHS, that's, what...?"

"Oh, only about six more hours," John grumbled. "I mean, we're not captives, but just walking straight out the door without signing off with anyone is going to cause someone a nightmare of paperwork – "

" _Greg!"_

All of them looked up, and so did almost everyone else, staff or patient, in the nearby vicinity. Melissa, bed-haired and in a pair of grey track pants and t-shirt she'd obviously slept in, had just barrelled through the waiting-room doors. She still had her car keys in one hand, but before Lestrade even had a chance to react she dropped them at her feet and sprang at him.

"Whoa –!" Lestrade's chair tipped back on two legs and hit the wall as she crawled into his lap and threw her arms around his neck.

"I swear," she said through the midst of a storm of kisses. "If I find out someone lit that fire... on purpose... I will kill them myself... with my _teeth..."_

By this time, Molly and John had already moved away to give them space and privacy; John had to gesture twice to Sherlock to give him the idea that he'd better do the same. As he stood up, his phone blooped out a text alert. Juggling Charlie in one arm and ignoring the pain in his burned hands, he fished it out.

Text? Mycroft was in the office at half-six in the morning, which was unusual even for him. Perhaps a government somewhere had been overthrown and they wanted Mycroft to fix it, somehow.

_CCTV shows Tesco Filling Station Springland Way Sudbury stamped 2:39am – M._

Sherlock suddenly found his hand shaking so violently that he had the choice between shoving his phone back into his coat pocket or dropping it on the floor.

And for a second, he wasn't entirely sure he wasn't going to drop Charlie, either.

_Lit that fire... on purpose..._

There would be absolutely no need for Mel to kill anyone with her teeth, Sherlock thought. Not if he got to them first. He distractedly handed Charlie to Molly. "Sorry," he mumbled without looking at either of them. "Just... got something I need to do..."

"'You okay, Sherlock?" John exchanged a look with Molly, frowning.

"Fine. Yes," Sherlock said over his shoulder as he wandered away down the corridor. "Yes. Won't be long..."

* * *

Sherlock Holmes found Harry Price exactly where he expected to, sitting in a vinyl-covered chair in the little vestibule that housed the department lifts. He'd been deep in thought; snapping to attention, he stood up. "Mr. Holmes," he said. "I hope everything's all right with Inspector Lestrade?"

"I'm going to make this very clear to you," Sherlock said icily. "The only reason you're still alive is because Charlotte Watson is."

Price shook his head. "Sorry," he said dazedly. "What?"

"I deal in facts." Sherlock moved closer, dropping his voice. Price made to back up, but there was nowhere to go. "So let's examine those _facts_ , shall we? It was perfectly obvious from the dynamics of the Ouija board that you were the one manually directing the glass. No real demon would have written like that. But you made a mistake. You claimed the fire would reveal a murder in two days' time. You didn't know we were planning on leaving Borley in the morning."

Harry was still frowning at him. "No," he said, a note of anxiety in his voice. "No, I –"

"If you'd been paying more attention when the incident with Ashleigh gave you the _idea_ to set the fire, you'd have heard me remark that there was no smell of accelerants. They are very, _very_ easy to detect, especially diesel fuel. And according to what I can assure you is the most reliable source in the country, CCTV shows you filling a can of diesel at the Tesco Filling Station in Sudbury at twenty to three this morning."

Price looked down for a second. "Yes, well," he blurted out. "Obviously, for my car..."

"No." Sherlock edged closer. "You had a motive – to prove you were right after all, and repair your damaged reputation with the London SPR. If I died in that blaze, so much the better for your case, with the best witness against you out of the way. But I'm used to attempts on my life. Let's talk about your _other_ intended victims."

"There was never meant to be – "

"After the séance, I said that "we" were going to spend one last night in the rectory. I excluded you, and you alone, in that wording. Then you heard Molly tell John they'd better fetch their daughter from the manor, which strips you of any claim you thought they were spending the night there. At no point did you hear that Molly and Charlie were staying at a hotel in Sudbury _. We_ were having another vigil."

"Mr. Holmes -!"

Sherlock lunged for Price's collar, shoving him backwards. Price's knees hit the plastic chair behind him with an audible _thunk;_ there was a louder one as the back of his head hit the wall behind.

"You set fire to the rectory when you thought there was a _baby in it,_ you miserable fucking _prick!"_

Price yelped, then screwed his eyes shut and drew a whimpering breath in through his front teeth. After a second or two, he took another shuddering breath and opened his eyes again.

"Mr. Holmes," he said. "I don't know what this is about, but you certainly started it. Let go of me, unless you'd like to be arrested for assault."

Sherlock could feel, rather than see, a small crowd forming behind him. He had no doubt that if there weren't any security officers in that crowd, there soon would be.

"Sherlock?" John spoke from somewhere at his left shoulder. "What's going on...?"

Sherlock shoved Price at the wall again. Then he loosened his grip and wiped his hands on his coat, as if the act of touching Price had befouled them.

"Mr. Price, given the evidence that the rectory fire was deliberately lit, I will be presenting my case to the relevant authorities to have you arrested and charged with arson," he said. "I believe I can raise a case for you to spend time in prison. And if I have my own way, you will also be charged with attempted murder."


	16. Barriers Down

In a rare moment of consideration for John and mercy for Harry Price, Sherlock chose not to divulge his conclusions about the source and nature of the rectory fire until they were back in London that evening. John was, predictably, so angry about it that it was a good thing for Harry Price that he was eighteen miles away at the time. Lestrade was not there to hear the news, having gone directly home with Melissa without even picking up his things from Baker Street.

"I don't think we'll hear from them for a few days," John remarked, once he'd spent twenty-seven uninterrupted minutes venting his feelings about Harry Price, mainly in the form of a stunning array of adjectives and creative threats. "But Sherlock, there's a few things I don't understand."

"I'm shocked," Sherlock said.

"No, but _seriously_. If there was never any ghost, then who locked Ashleigh Foyster up? Bit late to recheck the door now, but if it couldn't even be locked..."

Sherlock was silent. Suddenly, he reached down onto the carpet beside his chair and picked up a science periodical.

"And then," John went on, "Greg and me... we definitely saw someone at that window during the fire. And you did too, didn't you?"

"... Maybe."

"So who was it?"

"I don't know." The periodical in Sherlock's hands was apparently the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen in his life. "We were all suffering from smoke inhalation at the time. Trick of the light. Hallucination. Group delusion. Quite common in religious communities, and ghosts, as Price pointed out several times, do fall under a similar category." Before John could reply, Sherlock rose and went over to his desk, sorting through a cardboard crate on it. "Now," he said over his shoulder, in tones that were suddenly businesslike. "Tell me, which of these do you prefer?"

Before John could ask which of _what_ he preferred, Sherlock had placed a small plastic object in each hand. He looked down at them for a few seconds. "Childproof locks," he said blankly.

"Yes. According to my research it may be only a few months before Charlie's able to walk, and I imagine you'd be upset if you were to bring her over and she opened one of the kitchen cupboards and drank formalin."

"Just slightly." John glanced up at him and decided not to point out that this was the first time in nine months that the name _Charlie_ had ever come out of Sherlock's mouth. He turned the plastic locks over in his hands, looking from one to the other. "Well, uh. Looks to me like either of them will do the job just as well, so it's up to you," he said. Then he smiled. "So you'll babysit Charlie on Tuesday afternoon, then? Molly and I have a funeral to go to..."

"Don't push your luck."

"Okay."

* * *

Molly took a rare but justified day off from work the following day, which was a Monday. Mycroft was on the phone before nine that morning to inform her that he'd already ordered an inquiry into both Barts and Berrimer. As Sherlock had predicted, the relevant authorities were in the process of collaborating incriminating data before making any overt moves.

"I did warn you, I've no way of guaranteeing that these events won't be linked back to you," he said, all facts and figures. "It's likely that when it comes to court, you'll be asked to take the stand as a witness."

"I think Professor Harding will know it was me who reported him anyway," Molly said.

"Probably. I shouldn't worry about his harrassing you at work, if that's any consolation."

It was the following morning before Molly full understand what this meant. Arriving at the hospital shortly before eight, she peeked into Ross Harding's office and found that it had been stripped bare. Only the landline handset and the filing cabinet remained, and she was pretty sure just by looking at it that the latter had been emptied of its contents. She made her way up to the lab, finding Sharon Knowles fiddling with a pipette and a slide.

"Sorry, I'll be out of your way in a few minutes." Sharon glanced up. "Don't take this the wrong way, but why are you here? Aren't I covering your shift?"

"Oh, yes, I just came in to grab a few things." Molly hesitated near the doorway. "Um. Professor Harding isn't here?"

Sharon put down her pipette. "Nope," she said, eyes dancing. "You should have seen it, Moll. I'm glad I was in early yesterday morning. Good-looking men in suits swooped in and made him stand out in the corridor while they went through his filing cabinet and confiscated everything. I heard one of them say there was a warrant to seize his laptop, so I think there were people over at his house, too. You should have seen his face. I wonder what it's about?"

"Don't know," Molly replied, flushing hot.

"Oh, well, we'll find out eventually. If nowhere else but the gossip mill. How's John?"

"He's fine, really - he wasn't much hurt." Molly had told Sharon that she needed her shifts covered because John had been in a fire. "Still a bit croaky. Sorry, I've got to dash..."

"Okay. Let me know if you find out any more about what's going on with Harding, will you?"

"Oh, um, yes..." Molly blurted out, all but scurrying away before Sharon could continue her line of enquiry.

~~o0o~~

She went up to her office, sitting down and fishing through the desk for anything she might need at home for the next couple of days. Glancing over the desk itself, she realised that, once again, she'd left her coffee cup on the table with half an inch of cold, murky scum in the bottom of it. Well, she had an excuse this time, she thought, picking it up and wrinkling her nose in disgust. The last time she'd left the office, she'd been a little distracted and not at all thinking about her coffee.

She became suddenly aware of a shadow that had fallen across the doorway. Looking up, she saw exactly who she expected: Ross Harding was looming there, and his face was like an imminent thundersquall.

"Professor Harding," she heard herself say calmly, though her heart was thumping like a jackhammer in her chest and she suddenly felt sick. "I don't think you're meant to be here today, are you?"

"You bitch," he seethed at her. "I've been stood down pending an official Inquiry because of you..."

"Yes, I know," she said. She held fast to the desk in front of her with her fingertips, as if it were a line of defence. "Though, well, I don't think it was because of me, really. It was because you were trafficking body parts illegally. I think you've been doing that since before I worked here – "

He cut her off with a sort of grim chuckle that sent a chill up Molly's spine. To her, it was the sort of sound one might expect to come out of the villain on a Saturday-morning cartoon, not your boss of nine years. "You do realise," he said, "that Berrimer were using those organs for _research_ into the diseases and disorders that _kill_ children?"

"Well, that sort of research is legal," Molly said staunchly, setting her heels into the ground. "Just not when you don't get permission from the families..."

"Oh, yes. _Permission_." Harding's tone rendered the word obscene. "So tell me, do you know how few parents give permission for diagnostic autopsies, let alone the retention of tissue for research purposes?"

"Yes. It's a very low percentage."

"It's nearly _none._ They think it's more important to bury all the parts of their own children than to save anyone else's. They're selfish, and so are you. You let your precious little mummy-feelings get in the way of doing your job. Need I remind you that that job is to identify ways to prevent and eliminate disease? You failed, Dr. Hooper. So the next time you need to do an autopsy on someone's kid who died of atrial sepsis, I hope you remember that _you_ killed that kid, just so that Jessica bloody Sadler could bury a lump of meat in the ground."

Molly suddenly realised that the whole time there _had_ been a psychopath who worked at Barts, and it had never been Sherlock Holmes. "Excuse me," she said quietly, "I need to get past. I'm clocking off early today. My husband and I have a funeral to attend."

* * *

Molly had been anxiously trying to decide on a suitable outfit for Evie Sadler's funeral for the past two days. John's choice had been easy – the only good suit he had was black. But Molly had read online somewhere that black was inappropriate for a woman to wear to a funeral unless she was Orthodox or was a chief mourner, and most of her "nice clothes" were far too cheerful. Canary yellow? Pink?

In the end it had been navy blue, and then came the agony of trying to decide if St Andrew's was the kind of church where she had to wear something to cover her hair.

"You look fine," John reassured her as she got into the car. "Really. Nobody will notice what you're wearing, anyway."

Yes, she reflected to herself. After all, if she'd lost Charlie... well. She was pretty sure she wouldn't notice what someone she barely knew wore to the funeral, and may not even notice they'd turned up at all.

John was in the driver's seat, but he seemed in no great hurry to start the engine. He leaned over and squeezed her hand, and she took a deep breath. "Proud of you, Lolly," he said.

"I know." She let the breath out. "Thank you."

"Are you ready to do this?"

She nodded, and he released her hand and started the car. But as he merged onto the main road, Molly, looking out absently at the insultingly beautiful spring day, realised she'd lied to him without even meaning to. She wasn't ready to do this. Nobody, she thought, should ever be ready to attend the funeral of a baby.

* * *

"So in all, it was the lamest proposal in the history of anything, ever," Melissa said ruefully to her captive audience at Baker Street the following evening. "But I don't mind, somehow." She was twisting her new engagement ring, a single set diamond that Molly had described to her husband as 'the size of a... well, it's really big.'

Molly smiled from where she was curled up on the floor, with Charlie beside her. She suspected that the point wasn't how grand Greg's romantic gestures were.

"Oh, my husband was the same," Mrs Hudson reassured her from where she was ensconced in Sherlock's armchair. She reached out and took a glass of champagne from him. "He inherited the business from his father, and he always said, "Lou, we'll get married once I've inherited the business.' Of course, I thought that business was antiques. I had no idea the shop was actually a front for..." She dropped her voice to a scandalised tone, though every single one of them knew what was about to come out of her mouth. " _Drugs_."

"'Lou'?" John echoed.

"Oh, nobody but my father ever called me Martha," she explained blithely, waving one red-nailed hand. "My mother wanted to call me "Louise Martha", but I think she changed her mind because "Martha Louise" has a better ring to it. Anyway, so I waited, and waited..."

"Why didn't you ask him?" Melissa sipped her champagne.

"Because that worked out excellently for you," Sherlock muttered. He was standing by the north window, cradling a flute of champagne in his still-bandaged hands. Since Greg and Melissa had arrived he hadn't said much, but it had been his suggestion to "host the event" and he'd so far managed to not look too sour about it.

Mrs Hudson ignored this exchange. "And all this waiting, and you know, I was starting to wonder if Frank really meant it. And then finally he said to me, 'Lou, Dad's probably going to kick on forever just to spite me, so we may as well get hitched now.' We weren't engaged for long, of course."

"He could have made a bit more effort than that, Mrs H," John remarked.

"Yeah, well," Lestrade said in amusement, "I don't think you'd have done any better popping the question than I did, John."

Molly was looking thoughtful. "You know," she said, reaching over to gently tweak one of Charlie's blonde locks, "I don't think he did. I mean, actually propose."

"I'm sure I must have," John protested good-naturedly.

"Mmm, no, I think you probably didn't," Sherlock said.

"I'll bet you didn't, either." Melissa twisted her engagement ring again. "Considering you can't remember a thing about it. Come on, then, Molly, tell us the whole sordid story."

"Well, it's just," Molly faltered, glancing uncertainly at John. "How it happened was, Bill and Laura Murray had come around to tell us they were having a baby, and John asked me about whether I wanted to have kids. I said yes but I wanted to be married first, and then I don't know how it came about, but he was asking me if I would be okay with wearing his mother's engagement ring and we were setting a date for October. I think... I mean, I don't think he ever _asked_ me, we just assumed..."

"So you held your uterus for ransom," Sherlock said. "How romantic."

"And behold, Charlie." Melissa smiled tolerantly at Charlie, who was standing beside her mother, holding onto the coffee table for support. "I think I'll shut up about Greg's lack of romantic inclinations now."

"What do the kids think, Greg?" John asked him.

Lestrade smiled a little foolishly. "Yeah, I think they're okay with it. Hayley said, 'Jesus, Dad, it's about time you got your shit together', and Matthew went into a panic and said, 'but what if she doesn't even want to marry you?'"

"Gregory, how is that you spawned a genius child who has no observational skills at all?" Melissa asked in faux-despair.

"Have you set a date?" Molly asked, sipping her champagne.

"Not yet." Melissa gave her fiance an impudent glance. "It may not be until next year, though. After complaining for so long about it, I've decided I'm in no hurry."

"Told you," Lestrade teased her.

"Told me what?"

"That the ring was what you were really after."

"No," she protested. "And the _dress,_ Greg. Anyone can wear a ring, married or not. I'd like to see the woman who can get away with wearing a big fluffy white dress and veil for just no particular reason."

"Oh, my God," Lestrade groaned. "You're going to spend about three thousand quid on a dress, aren't you?"

"No, darling." She reached out and gently touched the single stitch over his eyebrow. "I do, however, intend to spend three _hundred_ pounds on a fantastic pair of shoes I've had my eye on for ages. And I will look completely sexy in them, thank you very much."

Lestrade looked across at Mrs. Hudson. "Please, Mrs. H," he said. "I already live in Shoe Hell. Back me up here?"

But Mrs. Hudson looked mischievous. "A woman can't go wrong with a good pair of shoes, Inspector," she said, giving Melissa a covert wink. "I think a nice wedding will be a good excuse to splash out a bit and treat myself to a pair. We should go together, dear, when you've got the time..."

A "shoe-date" was made, but it was never kept. At four o'clock the following morning, a summoner came to Baker Street, seeking out a soul.


End file.
